Good PHP ORM Library?

Question

Look into Doctrine.

Doctrine 1.2 implements Active Record. Doctrine 2+ is a DataMapper ORM.

Also, check out Xyster. It's based on the Data Mapper pattern.

Also, take a look at DataMapper vs. Active Record.

Try RedBean, its requires:

• No configuration
• No database (it creates everything on the fly)
• No models
• etc.

It even does all the locking and transactions for you and monitors performance in the background. (Heck! it even does garbage collection....) Best of all... you don't have to write a single... line of code... Jesus this, ORM layer, saved me ass!

There are only two good ones: Doctrine and Propel. We favor Doctrine, and it works well with Symfony. However if you're looking for database support besides the main ones you'll have to write your own code.

Axon ORM is part of the Fat-Free Framework - it features an on-the-fly mapper. No code generators. No stupid XML/YAML configuration files. It reads the database schema directly from the backend, so in most CRUD operations you don't even have to extend a base model. It works with all major PDO-supported database engines: MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server/Sybase, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.

/* SQL */
CREATE TABLE products (
    product_id INTEGER,
    description VARCHAR(128),
    PRIMARY KEY (product_id)
);

/* PHP */
// Create
$product=new Axon('products'); // Automatically reads the above schema
$product->product_id=123;
$product->description='Sofa bed';
$product->save(); // ORM knows it's a new record

// Retrieve
$product->load('product_id=123');
echo $product->description;

// Update
$product->description='A better sofa bed';
$product->save(); // ORM knows it's an existing record

// Delete
$product->erase();

Most of all, the plug-in and accompanying SQL data access layer are just as lightweight as the framework: 14 KB (Axon) + 6 KB (SQLdb). Fat-Free is just 55 KB.