Single table inheritance

There is no native inheritance support in most relational databases so it should be implemented manually if needed. One of approaches to the problem is called single table inheritance, described well by Martin Fowler.

According to the pattern in the entity table we add an additional column called type that determines which class will be instantiated from a row of data.

Let's implement simple car types inheritance with the following class structure:

Car
|- SportCar
|- HeavyCar

Get ready

We'll use a basic application. After creating and setting up a database, execute the following SQL to create the table and insert some data:

CREATE TABLE `car` (
    `id` int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
    `type` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

INSERT INTO car (id, NAME, TYPE) VALUES (1, 'Kamaz', 'heavy'), (2, 'Ferrari', 'sport'), (3, 'BMW', 'city');

Now use Gii to generate Car model.

How to do it...

We'll need a quite simple custom query class in order to always apply car type to query condition. Create models/CarQuery.php:

namespace app\models;

use yii\db\ActiveQuery;

class CarQuery extends ActiveQuery
{
    public $type;
    public $tableName;

    public function prepare($builder)
    {
        if ($this->type !== null) {
            $this->andWhere(["$this->tableName.type" => $this->type]);
        }
        return parent::prepare($builder);
    }
}

Now let's create models for car classes for different types. First models/SportCar.php:

namespace app\models;

class SportCar extends Car
{
    const TYPE = 'sport';

    public function init()
    {
        $this->type = self::TYPE;
        parent::init();
    }

    public static function find()
    {
        return new CarQuery(get_called_class(), ['type' => self::TYPE, 'tableName' => self::tableName()]);
    }

    public function beforeSave($insert)
    {
        $this->type = self::TYPE;
        return parent::beforeSave($insert);
    }
}

Then models/HeavyCar.php:

namespace app\models;

class HeavyCar extends Car
{
    const TYPE = 'heavy';

    public function init()
    {
        $this->type = self::TYPE;
        parent::init();
    }

    public static function find()
    {
        return new CarQuery(get_called_class(), ['type' => self::TYPE, 'tableName' => self::tableName()]);
    }

    public function beforeSave($insert)
    {
        $this->type = self::TYPE;
        return parent::beforeSave($insert);
    }
}

Now we need to override instantiate method in the Car model:

public static function instantiate($row)
{
    switch ($row['type']) {
        case SportCar::TYPE:
            return new SportCar();
        case HeavyCar::TYPE:
            return new HeavyCar();
        default:
           return new self;
    }
}

Also we need to override tableName method in the Car model in order for all models involved to use a single table:

public static function tableName()
{
    return '{{%car%}}';
}

That's it. Let's try it. Create the following actionTest in SiteController and run it:

// finding all cars we have
$cars = Car::find()->all();
foreach ($cars as $car) {
    echo "$car->id $car->name " . get_class($car) . "<br />";
}

// finding any sport car
$sportCar = SportCar::find()->limit(1)->one();
echo "$sportCar->id $sportCar->name " . get_class($sportCar) . "<br />";

The output should be:

1 Kamaz app\models\HeavyCar
2 Ferrari app\models\SportCar
3 BMW app\models\Car
2 Ferrari app\models\SportCar

That means models are now instantiated according to type field and the search is performed as expected.

How it works...

SportCar and HeavyCar models are quite similar. They both extend from Carand have two methods overridden. In find method we're instantiating a custom query class that stores car type and applies it in the prepare method that is called right before forming SQL for the database query. SportCar will only search for sport cars and HeavyCar will only search for heavy cars. In beforeSave we're making sure that the proper type is written to database when class is saved. TYPE constants are introduced just for convenience.

The Car model is pretty much what was generated by Gii except additional instantiate method. This method is called after data is retrieved from database and is about to be used to initialize class properties. Return value is uninitialized class instance and the only argument passed to the method is the row of data retrieved from the database. Exactly what we need. The implementation is a simple switch statement where we're checking if the type field matches type of the classes we suport. If so, an instance of the class is returned. If nothing matches, it falls back to returning a Car model instance.

Handling unique values

If you have a column marked as unique, to prevent breaking the UniqueValidator`` you need to specify thetargetClass` property.

    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            [['MyUniqueColumnName'], 'unique', 'targetClass' => '\app\models\Car'],
        ];
    }