Hi y’all, I’ve got this situation with my models, and I’m not sure what’s the best practice for this matter so I thought I’d discuss it here.

I am currently structuring a website that has many privilege groups, and a bunch of controllers.
It has a forum, polls, personal zone, group zone, news etc.

In my main page, I need to preform a whole bunch of actions that result from several tables in my DB (mainly regarding it’s privileges, like what forums is the user allowed to access etc.).

now, I was wondering - what is the best practice for that - should I actually load all the modules (around 6) to preform some simple actions or create a new model that will only preform these simple queries (but may repeat some of the functions in the original modules)?

I know that writing the same function twice is a big no no as far as object oriented programming, but loading 6 modules for some simple retrieve functions seems like too much of an unneeded overhead..

Any advice would be greeted!!

There is some debate regarding this in the MVC world but personally I like to create models for resources instead of just by table.

For example, I might have an auth model that works with users, groups, and permissions tables while I might also have a user model that only works with the users table.

I use ORM (DMZ) so I have to have at least one model for every table, but I like to pick one of the models to handle some extra inter-model communication duties. For instance given Users, User_Groups, and Permissions, I’d give functions to Users to handle some user-based features like returning all permissions of a user, checking to see if a given permissions is granted to a user, etc.

All in all, I wouldn’t really worry about the overhead unless you have some seriously heavy-weight functions - in which case it isn’t loading them that is your problem.

Likely even a dozen models of the same size would represent only a few kb of memory and an extremely small amount of processing labor, so I’d worry more about ease of development, maintenance, and orderliness of the design rather than a few extra load statements.

First, thank you both for taking the time to read and reply.

Ben - I do not have a model-per-table structure, but more of a model-per-module (the forums have only one model, though use 3 different tables). Nevertheless, there is some overlap between users-to-forums (permissions), users and forums. I just wonder weather to suppress this overlap into one of the models and load it each time I use it in any other location or just address the same table (and possibly the same action) within two models. I must add - this will probably only matter in the website’s main page - since it is the only place I have to filter several modules with several levels of permissions for each user.

Brian - I think the same when it comes down to using one model for module, instead of 3 (at best). I think it’s messy.
But, since I have never developed a fully working website from base up using CI and MVC, I am quite unsure of what would actually be messier - loading 6 different modules or just re-creating the functions. Each of these seems to have its upsides but I am still having some difficulty in choosing the best practice. I would LOVE reading what you would do in this situation..

Again, thank you very much for replying. I am struggling with this for some time now, but right now I’m at the point in which I have to decide and start it up..

You could always do a common or base model and extend your other models off of that model so they will be available in each model that you have loaded.

I guess you are right, but then I’ll have a bunch of functions I don’t need in all the other models (I’m assuming you’re talking about having a main page model and have the all the other models extend it..).

I don’t know if it’s a ‘good MVC’ practice, but I think I like your idea best at the moment.. Is it ‘logically’ best practice?

thank you!

Sometimes best practice isn’t always what’s best.  Just do whatever makes the most since for your project.  If you have a model that doesn’t need any of the functions in your base then just extend the ci Model instead of your Main_model.

Noy Gabay - 29 October 2009 04:24 PM

In my main page, I need to preform a whole bunch of actions that result from several tables in my DB (mainly regarding it’s privileges, like what forums is the user allowed to access etc.).

Perhaps you could be a bit clearer on exactly the kinds of things that you are wanting to do here, and what database dependencies they have, and where / how often you need to access the resultant data.

For instance, for privileges, typically these are loaded at login and stored in the session - consequently no database activity (or indeed enquiry more complex than a session-data check) is required while the session remains active.  Approaching your actual problem / requirements from a fundamental level may be more satisfying than approaching your problem with the stated but possibly arbitrarily self-imposed limitation of needing to interact with 6 different models.

Also you appear to be using the word module a fair bit, sometimes as though its a synonym for model.  Are you using a genuine module approach here - and if so, what one?