[symfony-users] symfony extensible model for other data source than default ORM (API, SOAP WS, CouchDB...)

Hi,

In symfony 1.2, I can only create models using one of the 2 ORMs
Doctrine or Propel. Each of the 2 plugins implements some tasks for
generating an admin backend, creating fixture data, some input
validation.

Now let's say I want to use a different data source, that is not a
database covered by the ORMs, for example:
- a web API (twitter, last.fm, flickr, salesforce.com ...)
- a SOAP web service
- a datastore like CouchDB

I believe that if I want to use one of those, I'll have to build or
find a plugin similar to sfPropelPlugin or sfDoctrinePlugin to access
the data source. In case my datasource provides CRUD functionnality, I
might want to generate an admin interface, which means creating a
generator and maybe duplicating code with the default ORMs admin
generator.

Another approach would be to have a set of datasource agnostic model
classes that will provide feature such as an admin generator, input
validation, fixture import and an interface to the datasource. This
will allow developers to create custom models for various datasource
and not be restricted to databases.

I believe this feature is similar to DataSources in CakePHP or to the
ActiveModel planned for Rails 3. I've also been using that pattern
other the past couple years in a custom PHP framework that is used for
a web app using a SOAP backend. I work on daily basis with SOAP
developers (on new features for instance), where I need to start
building my webapp sometimes before the web service is ready. In this
case I create my model class and use a datasource yaml (which will be
a simple yaml file with dummy data) and when the web service is ready,
I just have to switch the datasource. This allows me to not wait and
be able to develop features in parallel with the backend.

So, I was wondering what is the approach taken by symfony for this
particular use case? Is there any plan on the roadmap for 1.3 or 2.0
to provide a unified model layer that will allow developers to use
custom data sources?

Thanks!


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