How to Get Started

Questions and Answers -- Getting started

Yes, this is a mess, needs serious cleanup and editing, and organization with respect to the other "getting started" page.

First steps in GLORP: What's needed to map Smalltalk objects to database rows.

What is needed to get you started?

To use GLORP to correctly map between an RDBMS and Smalltalk objects, you need to do the following:

• • Create a descriptor class. You do this by subclassing Glorp.DescriptorSystem. You then add your descriptions (see below) as methods to this class.

  • A table model. This describes how the table in the database should look like. The naming convention is#tableForTABLENAMEINUPPERCASE:. For example:

tableForMYTABLE: aTable (aTable createFieldNamed: 'id' type: platform sequence) bePrimaryKey. aTable createFieldNamed: 'text' type: platform text. aTable createFieldNamed: 'size' type: platform int4.

• • A mapping descriptor. This describes how the fields in your database map to instance variables of your objects. The naming convention here is #descriptorForYourObjectClass.

| t | t := self tableNamed: 'mytable'. aDesc table: t. (aDesc newMapping: DirectMapping) from: #id to: (t fieldNamed: 'id'). (aDesc newMapping: DirectMapping) from: #text to: (t fieldNamed: 'text'). (aDesc newMapping: DirectMapping) from: #size to: (t fieldNamed: 'size').

• • A class model (Optional for simple cases, this can be inferred from the other descriptions). It needs to be called #classModelForYourClassName.

classModelForMyObject: model model newAttributeNamed: #id; newAttributeNamed: #text; newAttributeNamed: #size.

• • Declare all tables used. The method #allTableNames is supposed to return a Collection of all your tables:

allTableNames ^ #( 'mytable' )

• • Declare all classes used. The method #constructAllClasses should list all classes used as in:

constructAllClasses ^ (super constructAllClasses) add: MyClass; yourself

You can now instruct glorp to build the tables in the database according to your description. sess is a GlorpSession.

createSchema "Execute me to create a fresh schema" "First, get a GlorpSession somehow -- sess" ... self dropTables: sess. self createAllSequences: sess. self createAllTables: sess. createAllSequences: sess sess system platform areSequencesExplicitlyCreated ifTrue: [sess system allSequences do: [:each | sess accessor createSequence: each ifError: [:error | Transcript show: error messageText]]] createAllTables: sess sess system allTables do: [:each | sess accessor createTable: each ifError: [:errorx | Transcript show: errorx messageText]]. sess system allTables do: [:each | sess accessor createTableIndexes: each ifError: [:errorx | Transcript show: errorx messageText]]. sess system allTables do: [:each | sess accessor createTableFKConstraints: each ifError: [:errorx | Transcript show: errorx messageText]]

How to connect to a database

connectToDatabase | login accessor sess | login := (Login new) database: PostgreSQLPlatform new; username: 'dbusername'; password: 'dbpassword'; connectString: 'localhost_databasename'. accessor := DatabaseAccessor forLogin: login. accessor loginIfError: [:err | Transcript nextPutAll: err]. (sess := GlorpSession new) system: (DBAdaptor forPlatform: login database). sess accessor: accessor. ^sess disconnectFromDatabase: sess sess ifNotNil: [ sess accessor logout ]