Whoa... getCollection('xxx') creates a database table??!

This is surprising to me... working with my own custom database tables, I’ve generated my xPDO XML schema, loaded the package, but when I get the collection:



It will CREATE a database table if the table isn’t there. Is that normal? I was really surprised that my database was being manipulated here. I would have expected an error saying the collection didn’t exist or something.

Yes, it is normal.

Thanks Shaun. Is there an option that can control that behavior? My religious reverence for the database is a bit spooked by this database agnostic stuff that creates tables on the fly... it takes some getting used to I suppose.

You can create it beforehand : http://rtfm.modx.com/display/xPDO20/xPDOManager.createObjectContainer

It is already created. My dev process is typically design and build the database, then access it. That’s why I was surprised when database tables were getting created when I thought I was just accessing them.

getCollection actually access the database.

You can maybe control it by instanciating a newQuery object before using getCollection to check if the container exist before accessing the db.
I have not tested it and i suspect newQuery to actually create the table also.

There is not an option to control table auto-creation currently, though I’ve been meaning to add that. Improvement ticket #2909.

Nice. +1 for that feature. On-the-fly table creation might spook some devs, so that’d be a handy option. I’d even lean towards having the auto-table-creation behavior disabled by default just to avoid the mess of having people’s heads explode.