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<title>Reflecting on Service Data Objects</title>
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</div><hr /><div id="sdo.sample.reflection" class="section">
<h2 class="title">Reflecting on Service Data Objects</h2>
<p class="para">
SDOs have a knowledge of the structure they have been created to
represent (the model). For example, a Company SDO created using
<a href="sdo.examples.html" class="link">the Company XML schema</a> above
would only be permitted to contain DepartmentType data objects
which in turn could only contain EmployeeType data objects.
</p>
<p class="para">
Sometimes it is useful to be able to access this model information at
runtime. For example, this could be used to automatically generate
a user interface for populating a data object. The model information
is accessed using reflection.
</p>
<p class="para">
<div class="example" id="example-5463">
<p><strong>Example #1 Reflecting on a Data Object</strong></p>
<div class="example-contents"><p>
The following example shows how we can reflect on an empty Employee
data object.
</p></div>
<div class="example-contents">
<div class="phpcode"><code><span style="color: #000000">
<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php<br /> </span><span style="color: #FF8000">// Create the employee data object (e.g. from an XML Data Access Service)<br /> </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$employee </span><span style="color: #007700">= ...;<br /> </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$reflection </span><span style="color: #007700">= new </span><span style="color: #0000BB">SDO_Model_ReflectionDataObject</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$employee</span><span style="color: #007700">);<br /> print(</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$reflection</span><span style="color: #007700">);<br /></span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>
</span>
</code></div>
</div>
<div class="example-contents"><p>The above example will output:</p></div>
<div class="example-contents screen">
<div class="cdata"><pre>
object(SDO_Model_ReflectionDataObject)#4 { - ROOT OBJECT - Type {
companyNS:EmployeeType[3] { commonj.sdo:String $name;
commonj.sdo:String $SN; commonj.sdo:Boolean $manager; } }
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="example-contents"><p>
Using print on the SDO_Model_ReflectionDataObject writes out the data
object's model. We can see from the output how the type
companyNS:EmployeeType has three properties and we can see the names
of the properties along with their types. Note, the primitive types
are listed as SDO types (e.g. commonj.sdo namespace, String type).
It is worth noting that this is the SDO model and when these are
surfaced to an application they can be treated as the PHP equivalent
types (e.g. string and boolean).
</p></div>
</div>
</p>
<p class="para">
<div class="example" id="example-5464">
<p><strong>Example #2 Accessing the type information</strong></p>
<div class="example-contents"><p>
We can query the type information of a data object using reflection.
The following example checks the type corresponds to a data object
rather than a primitive and then iterates through the properties of
the type, writing out the name of each property ($type and $property
are SDO_Model_Type and SDO_Model_Property objects, respectively).
</p></div>
<div class="example-contents">
<div class="phpcode"><code><span style="color: #000000">
<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php<br /> </span><span style="color: #FF8000">// Create the employee data object (e.g. from an XML Data Access Service)<br /> </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$employee </span><span style="color: #007700">= ...;<br /> </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$reflection </span><span style="color: #007700">= new </span><span style="color: #0000BB">SDO_Model_ReflectionDataObject</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$employee</span><span style="color: #007700">);<br /> </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$type </span><span style="color: #007700">= </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$reflection</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">getType</span><span style="color: #007700">();<br /> if (! </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$type</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">isDataType</span><span style="color: #007700">()) {<br /> foreach (</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$type</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">getProperties</span><span style="color: #007700">() as </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$property</span><span style="color: #007700">) {<br /> print </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$property</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">getName</span><span style="color: #007700">() . </span><span style="color: #DD0000">"\n"</span><span style="color: #007700">;<br /> }<br /> }<br /></span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>
</span>
</code></div>
</div>
<div class="example-contents"><p>The above example will output:</p></div>
<div class="example-contents screen">
<div class="cdata"><pre>
name
SN
manager
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
</p>
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