Various tips and tricksΒΆ

  • Use Find usages of PhpStorm for examples! The source code of the core is a great way to learn how specific methods of the API are used. In PhpStorm it is extremely helpful to right click on a single method and list all method usages with Find usages. This is especially handy to quickly see usage examples of complex methods like join() from the QueryBuilder.

  • INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements are often easier to read and write using the Connection object instead of the QueryBuilder.

  • SELECT DISTINCT aField is not supported but can be substituted with a ->groupBy('aField').

  • getSQL() and execute() can be used after each other during development to simplify debugging:

    $queryBuilder
   ->select('uid')
   ->from('tt_content')
   ->where(
      $queryBuilder->expr()->eq('bodytext', $queryBuilder->createNamedParameter('klaus'))
   );
debug($queryBuilder->getSql());
$statement = $queryBuilder->execute();

  • In contrast to the old API based on $GLOBALS['TYPO3_DB'], doctrine-dbal will throw exceptions if something goes wrong when calling execute(). The exception type is a \Doctrine\DBAL\DBALException which can be caught and transferred to a better error message if the application has to expect query errors. Note this is not good habit and often indicates an architectural flaw of the application at a different layer.

  • count() query types using the QueryBuilder typically call ->fetchColumn(0) to receive the count value. The count() method of Connection object does that automatically and returns the count value result directly.