Data Mapper Injection in PHP Objects

I was trying to figure out a simple way to have data from a database injected into a domain object in PHP. I don't want to enforce that the domain object implements setters and getters for every property, and the burden on the developer for implementing the data injection interface should be as low as possible.

My solution relies on PHP's ability to pass and assign values by reference. The data mapper is injected into domain object. The domain object tells the mapper to attach to the object's properties. The mapper can then read and write to those properties as if they were its own.

interface Mappable {
    public function injectMapper(Mapper $mapper);
}

class Mapper {
    protected $attached = array();

    public function attach(&$ref, $fieldName) {
        $this->attached[$fieldName] = &$ref;
    }

    public function fromDataStore($data) {
        foreach ($data as $fieldName => $value) {
            if (array_key_exists($fieldName, $this->attached)) {
                $this->attached[$fieldName] = $value;
            }
        }
    }

    public function fromDomainObject() {
        $data = array();
        foreach ($this->attached as $fieldName => $value) {
            $data[$fieldName] = $value;
        }
        return $data;
    }
}

class Product implements Mappable {
    protected $id;
    protected $name;

    public function injectMapper(Mapper $mapper) {
        $mapper->attach($this->id, 'id');
        $mapper->attach($this->name, 'name');
    }

    // ...domain/business logic methods go here...
}

// Create a product and manipulate it
$product = new Product();
$product->doFoo();
$product->linkToBar();

// Inject the data mapper
$mapper = new Mapper();
$product->injectMapper($mapper);
// This could be a call to save the array of data in a database
print_r($mapper->fromDomainObject());

// Read a product from the "database"
$product = new Product();
$mapper = new Mapper();
$product->injectMapper($mapper);
$mapper->fromDataStore( array("id"=>123, "name"=>"Widgets") );

So what's happening here? The fields of the Product domain object are passed into the Mapper's `attach` method by reference. This allows that method to modify the variable passed in without passing it back to the caller.

public function attach(&$ref, $fieldName) {
        $this->attached[$fieldName] = &$ref;
    }

If the value were only passed by reference, only the `attach` method would be able to modify it. As soon as the method returned, the reference would be lost. In order to continue having a reference to the Product's properties, the `attach` method holds the reference in an array using "assign by reference."

Note the ampersand after the equals sign. This tells PHP that we don't want to assign a copy of the value in $ref, we want the reference to $ref itself. This allows us to later modify the value of the property in Product by modifying the value of a reference to the same place in memory that that Product's properties are held.

So now we have the beginnings of a basic data mapper that remains loosely coupled to our domain objects, and without having to write an explicit mapping class for each domain object-to-database mapping.