How to store an array() in a RedBean property?

Question

I got the following:

$post = (array) json_decode($post);
$pushUser->dagen = (array) $post['days'];

The 'days' part of the post is:

[dagen] => Array
    (
        [0] => Monday
        [1] => Wednesday 
    )

All I want to do is store in $pushUser-dagen the array with days :)... pretty easy huh?

But then I get these errors:

exception 'RedBean_Exception_Security' with message 'Invalid Bean: property dagen ' in E:\Documenten\Dropbox\Dropbox\dummy-htdocs\VID_service\vid_push\libs\rb.php:3465 Stack trace: #0 E:\Documenten\Dropbox\Dropbox\dummy-htdocs\VID_service\vid_push\libs\rb.php(3496): RedBean_OODB->check(Object(RedBean_OODBBean)) #1 E:\Documenten\Dropbox\Dropbox\dummy-htdocs\VID_service\vid_push\libs\rb.php(7376): RedBean_OODB->store(Object(RedBean_OODBBean)) #2 E:\Documenten\Dropbox\Dropbox\dummy-htdocs\VID_service\vid_push\api\registerpush.php(32): R::store(Object(RedBean_OODBBean)) #3 {main}

Is it not possible to store arrays in a RedBean Object?

Answer 1

http://redbeanphp.com/community/wiki/index.php/Tutorial#Loading_A_Bean

Check out import(). You'd have to format your arrays for the key/value pair storage as column/row etc.

$bean->import($array);

$bean->import($array, "key1,key4");

and so forth. You can always use array or regex search functions to find your value or format your array in a way Redbean understands where Array is key/value and key has to follow certain rules which are defined in the check() function in redbean, I can't remember off the top of my head, just open rb.php and search for "public function check(" and you should find it, but the last condition is what you must satisfy absolutely.

$pattern = '/[^a-z0-9_]/i';

it must not be an array, or an object, and the property must be a string > strlen of 2 otherwise it will throw an invalid bean: property ..... exception. It must be a flat array of key=value and you can easily import.

I hope that helps.

Answer 2

There is no way to store arrays in beans because RedBeanPHP cannot predict how you want the array to be represented in the database.

The solution depends on what you want to do with this information later. Do you want to add other things than just weekdays, like evenings or overtime (in case of scheduling?), in this case I would opt for the most flexible yet easy solution:

//Flexible solution
foreach($days as $day) 
$user->sharedDay[] = R::findOne('day',' name = ? ',array($day));

Because we use sharedDay instead of ownDay, the records will not be duplicated. This solution creates a neat link table day_user.

Of course you need to store the week days in the database once:

 $days = array('monday',...);
 foreach($days as $dayname) {
    $d = R::dispense('day');
    $d->name = $dayname;
    R::store($d);
 }

If you want to be able to quickly trace a user with a certain weekday profile you may want to encode the days:

//Performance solution
function days($days) {
    $weekdays = array('sunday','monday','tuesday',...);
    $field = '';
    foreach($weekdays as $day) {
            $field .= (in_array($day,$days)) ? '1' : '0';
    }
    return $field;
}


$user->days = bindec(days($days)); 

In this case you can find every user that has 'monday' and 'saturday' by querying: days = 33. That's really fast.

If you don't care about the data at all you might go with:

//Quick and dirty solution
$user->days = implode(',',$days);