CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpormnaming-conventionsdoctrine-ormentities
rfc1484
rfc1484

Reputation: 9837

Naming convention: singular vs plural for classes describing entities in PHP

I think that the standard practice to name tables in MySQL is to use plural names.

The classes refering to those tables should also be plural?

For example, imagine that you have a table called Users, that is used for authentication purposes.

This table would be described in an entity class more or less like this using the doctrine ORM:

namespace Company\BlogBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="Users")
 */
class Users
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer", name="user_id")
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     * 
     * @var integer $userId
     */
    protected $userId;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string", length="255", name="first_name")
     * 
     * @var string $userName
     */
    protected $userName;
    ...
}

Is this correct?

Or should the class "Users" be named in singular ("User")?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 6815

Answers (4)

Jorj
Jorj

Reputation: 2693

I also subscribe to using table names with singular name because a row represents one item of a table in the same way as an object represents one instance of class. The only exceptions can be when each row of a table contains for example serialized (or equivalent) items, i.e. "neighbors" of a location.

Upvotes: 0

Ondřej Mirtes
Ondřej Mirtes

Reputation: 5616

Class representing one database row (an entity) should have singular name. Doctrine 2 default behaviour is to name database tables the same way. You can reconfigure it in every @Table annotation if you'd like to, but I suggest you to stick with Doctrine naming conventions - singular name for database table is also acceptable.

Upvotes: 5

Bob Baddeley
Bob Baddeley

Reputation: 2262

In the database, they're plural because it's a table of a lot of them; a table of lots of users. As an object, it's a singular thing; a single user. I generally keep my classes singular.

Upvotes: 3

Nev Stokes
Nev Stokes

Reputation: 9759

If your class is supposed to represent an instance of a real-world item then semantically I'd say that singular form may be the one to go with. The database table is used to store multiple items so plural form is appropriate there. Either way it doesn't really matter just as long as you're consistent.

Upvotes: 5

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