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# CakePHP ORM

The CakePHP ORM provides a powerful and flexible way to work with relational
databases. Using a datamapper pattern the ORM allows you to manipulate data as
entities allowing you to create expressive domain layers in your applications.

## Database engines supported

The CakePHP ORM is compatible with:

* MySQL 5.1+
* Postgres 8+
* SQLite3
* SQLServer 2008+
* Oracle (through a [community plugin](https://github.com/CakeDC/cakephp-oracle-driver))

## Connecting to the Database

The first thing you need to do when using this library is register a connection
object.  Before performing any operations with the connection, you need to
specify a driver to use:

```php
use Cake\Datasource\ConnectionManager;

ConnectionManager::setConfig('default', [
	'className' => 'Cake\Database\Connection',
	'driver' => 'Cake\Database\Driver\Mysql',
	'database' => 'test',
	'username' => 'root',
	'password' => 'secret',
	'cacheMetadata' => false // If set to `true` you need to install the optional "cakephp/cache" package.
]);
```

Once a 'default' connection is registered, it will be used by all the Table
mappers if no explicit connection is defined.

## Creating Associations

In your table classes you can define the relations between your tables. CakePHP's ORM
supports 4 association types out of the box:

* belongsTo - E.g. Many articles belong to a user.
* hasOne - E.g. A user has one profile
* hasMany - E.g. A user has many articles
* belongsToMany - E.g. An article belongsToMany tags.

You define associations in your table's `initialize()` method. See the
[documentation](https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/associations.html) for
complete examples.

## Reading Data

Once you've defined some table classes you can read existing data in your tables:

```php
use Cake\ORM\TableRegistry;

$articles = TableRegistry::get('Articles');
foreach ($articles->find() as $article) {
	echo $article->title;
}
```

You can use the [query builder](https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/query-builder.html) to create
complex queries, and a [variety of methods](https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/retrieving-data-and-resultsets.html)
to access your data.

## Saving Data

Table objects provide ways to convert request data into entities, and then persist
those entities to the database:

```php
use Cake\ORM\TableRegistry;

$data = [
	'title' => 'My first article',
	'body' => 'It is a great article',
	'user_id' => 1,
	'tags' => [
		'_ids' => [1, 2, 3]
	],
	'comments' => [
		['comment' => 'Good job'],
		['comment' => 'Awesome work'],
	]
];

$articles = TableRegistry::get('Articles');
$article = $articles->newEntity($data, [
	'associated' => ['Tags', 'Comments']
]);
$articles->save($article, [
	'associated' => ['Tags', 'Comments']
])
```

The above shows how you can easily marshal and save an entity and its
associations in a simple & powerful way. Consult the [ORM documentation](https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/saving-data.html)
for more in-depth examples.

## Deleting Data

Once you have a reference to an entity, you can use it to delete data:

```php
$articles = TableRegistry::get('Articles');
$article = $articles->get(2);
$articles->delete($article);
```

## Additional Documentation

Consult [the CakePHP ORM documentation](https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm.html)
for more in-depth documentation.
