Is it worth making a database connection class?

[svivian]

At the moment I'm using a set of functions for connecting to a database, running queries and so on. I've heard a few people suggest using classes for this stuff, but examples I've seen are purely functions wrapped in a class, which is pointless - the class doesn't represent an object at all.

 

Are there any good ways to write these type of classes? I've got a few ideas:

- when running a query, store the "result resource" in a variable in the class; this helps keep db-specific code (eg mysql functions) out of the main script

- store row values internally: probably not worth doing since you generally want the data back every time you get results

 

The problem with storing things internally is that if you have nested query loops (eg looking up more data from the results you just got back) it fails because you overwrite the result resource from the outer loop, with the one in the inner loop.

 

Anyway... thoughts/suggestions welcome

[Liquid Fire]

I would not be able to live without my database class, it makes creating certain queries a lot easier and you can automatically clean query values.  Now as for storing the query result in the database object, that is not smart and most popular database classes(like PEAR) do don't do that, you would do something like

 

$query = "SELECT a, b, c

FROM table_a

WHERE a = '1'";

$rows = $database->get_all($query);

 

foreach($rows as $row)

{

//another set of queries based on first query

}

[svivian]

^But that's kinda my point. Wrapping the functions in a class has no use, aside from giving them a pseudo-namespace (which can be done with a function prefix, eg "dbQuery", "dbRow"). It would make sense if you're storing something within the class...

[maexus]

For results I store in the object as well as return them so it gives me options. You can certainly use the many DB objects/abstractions that are out there if you wish.

[bombes]

There are already classes made for this.  The one I use is called db_works.php.  It's used in osCommerce.  I'm sure most open source projects (osCommerce, phpBB, etc...) come with these type of classes.