Can I use Laravel's database layer standalone?

Question

For some time now I have been looking towards using a php framework for my work. I've been writing procedural style until recently and is still trying to find my way around the oop world/style. I figured that a php framework would help me write better code and I'm pretty sure I'll lean towards the Laravel project in a near future.

Right now I'm in need of a database layer that I can use in my existing code. I use mysqli with prepared statements right now, as it was easy for me to implement (using MySQL before).

I've been looking at http://medoo.in as an "easy" way to use a pdo wrapper/class but the lack of activity on the support page, and the fact that I'm working on using Laravel in the future, made me wonder if I could use the Laravel database layer now for my existing code.

Could this be done and would it make sense or am I misunderstanding and mixing concepts of code styling?

Answer 1

IMO it's absolutely valid to transition to an OOP approach step by step.

To your question:

Yes, you can use Eloquent standalone.

Here is the packagist site: https://packagist.org/packages/illuminate/database Add "illuminate/database": "5.0.*@dev" to your composer.json and run composer update. Now you'll need to bootstrap Eloquent. (https://github.com/illuminate/database)

The following is copied from the repo's readme:

Usage Instructions

First, create a new "Capsule" manager instance. Capsule aims to make configuring the library for usage outside of the Laravel framework as easy as possible.

use Illuminate\Database\Capsule\Manager as Capsule;  $capsule = new Capsule;  $capsule->addConnection([     'driver'    => 'mysql',     'host'      => 'localhost',     'database'  => 'database',     'username'  => 'root',     'password'  => 'password',     'charset'   => 'utf8',     'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',     'prefix'    => '', ]);  // Set the event dispatcher used by Eloquent models... (optional) use Illuminate\Events\Dispatcher; use Illuminate\Container\Container; $capsule->setEventDispatcher(new Dispatcher(new Container));  // Set the cache manager instance used by connections... (optional) $capsule->setCacheManager(...);  // Make this Capsule instance available globally via static methods... (optional) $capsule->setAsGlobal();  // Setup the Eloquent ORM... (optional; unless you've used setEventDispatcher()) $capsule->bootEloquent(); 

Once the Capsule instance has been registered. You may use it like so:

Using The Query Builder

$users = Capsule::table('users')->where('votes', '>', 100)->get(); 

Other core methods may be accessed directly from the Capsule in the same manner as from the DB facade:

$results = Capsule::select('select * from users where id = ?', array(1)); 

Using The Schema Builder

Capsule::schema()->create('users', function($table) {     $table->increments('id');     $table->string('email')->unique();     $table->timestamps(); }); 

Using The Eloquent ORM

class User extends Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model {}  $users = User::where('votes', '>', 1)->get(); 

For further documentation on using the various database facilities this library provides, consult the Laravel framework documentation.