Joomla! Documentation™

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JTable is an abstract class that forms the basis for all database table classes. Some of the methods listed will be overridden by the child class so you should check the child class documentation for further information.

Each physical database table created should have a corresponding class derived from JTable to represent it. JTable provides many methods to make common manipulations to the table much simpler. For example, one of the most common operations you will need to perform is to read a table row into memory given a value for the primary key. This can be done easily using the load method. The table row can then be just as easily updated using the save method, which also performs any predefined sanity checks on the table fields.

Defined in

libraries/joomla/database/table.php

Methods

Method name	Description
__construct	Object constructor to set table and key fields. In most cases this will be overridden by child classes to explicitly set the table and key fields for a particular database table.
getFields	Get the columns from database table.
getTableName	Method to get the database table name for the class.
getKeyName	Method to get the primary key field name for the table.
getDbo	Method to get the JDatabase connector object.
setDBO	Method to set the JDatabase connector object.
setRules	Method to set rules for the record.
getRules	Method to get the rules for the record.
reset	Method to reset class properties to the defaults set in the class definition. It will ignore the primary key as well as any private class properties.
bind	Method to bind an associative array or object to the JTable instance.This method only binds properties that are publicly accessible and optionally takes an array of properties to ignore when binding.
load	Method to load a row from the database by primary key and bind the fields to the JTable instance properties.
check	Method to perform sanity checks on the JTable instance properties to ensure they are safe to store in the database. Child classes should override this method to make sure the data they are storing in the database is safe and as expected before storage.
store	Method to store a row in the database from the JTable instance properties. If a primary key value is set the row with that primary key value will be updated with the instance property values. If no primary key value is set a new row will be inserted into the database with the properties from the JTable instance.
save	Method to provide a shortcut to binding, checking and storing a JTable instance to the database table. The method will check a row in once the data has been stored and if an ordering filter is present will attempt to reorder the table rows based on the filter. The ordering filter is an instance property name. The rows that will be reordered are those whose value matches the JTable instance for the property specified.
delete	Method to delete a row from the database table by primary key value.
checkOut	Method to check a row out if the necessary properties/fields exist. To prevent race conditions while editing rows in a database, a row can be checked out if the fields 'checked_out' and 'checked_out_time' are available. While a row is checked out, any attempt to store the row by a user other than the one who checked the row out should be held until the row is checked in again.
checkIn	Method to check a row in if the necessary properties/fields exist. Checking a row in will allow other users the ability to edit the row.
hit	Method to increment the hits for a row if the necessary property/field exists.
isCheckedOut	TODO: This either needs to be static or not.
getNextOrder	Method to get the next ordering value for a group of rows defined by an SQL WHERE clause. This is useful for placing a new item last in a group of items in the table.
reorder	Method to compact the ordering values of rows in a group of rows defined by an SQL WHERE clause.
move	Method to move a row in the ordering sequence of a group of rows defined by an SQL WHERE clause. Negative numbers move the row up in the sequence and positive numbers move it down.
publish	Method to set the publishing state for a row or list of rows in the database table. The method respects checked out rows by other users and will attempt to checkin rows that it can after adjustments are made.
canDelete	Generic check for whether dependancies exist for this object in the database schema
toXML	Method to export the JTable instance properties to an XML string.
getInstance	Static method to get an instance of a JTable class if it can be found in the table include paths. To add include paths for searching for JTable classes JTable::addIncludePath().
addIncludePath	Add a filesystem path where JTable should search for table class files. You may either pass a string or an array of paths.

Importing

jimport( 'joomla.database.table' );