PHP form post, automatically mapping to an object (model binding)

Question

I do a lot of ASP.NET MVC 2 development, but I'm tackling a small project at work and it needs to be done in PHP.

Is there anything built-in to PHP to do model binding, mapping form post fields to a class? Some of my PHP code currently looks like this:

class EntryForm
{
    public $FirstName = "";
    public $LastName = "";
}

    $EntryForm = new EntryForm();

if ($_POST && $_POST["Submit"] == "Submit")
{
    $EntryForm->FirstName = trim($_POST["FirstName"]);
    $EntryForm->LastName = trim($_POST["LastName"]);
}

Is there anything built-in to a typical PHP install that would do such mapping like you'd find in ASP.NET MVC, or does it require an additional framework?

Answer 1

Not native but a better solution that permits you using your own classes or a standard class ...

function populateWithPost ($obj = NULL)
{
  if(is_object($obj)) {

  } else {
      $obj = new StdClass ();
  }

  foreach ($_POST as $var => $value) {
      $obj->$var = trim($value); //here you can add a filter, like htmlentities ...
  }

  return $obj;
}

And then you can use it like:

class EntryForm
{
    public $FirstName = "";
    public $LastName = "";
}

$entry = populateWithPost(new EntryForm());

or

 $obj = populateWithPost();

Answer 2

Built in to PHP? No.

The framework answer you hint at is where you'll need to go for this one (after all, ASP.NET is a framework too)

Answer 3

What you're looking for is an ORM (Object Relationship Mapping) layer. PHP has a couple, one of which is Doctrine. That said, mahomedalidp's answer is very handy for getting things done in PHP.