Phalcon model and table attribute with multiple foreign keys

Question

As you can see from this ERD, I'm designing a logger that keep track of actions of several type of users. In instance, every record in the logger.log table will have only one related record in one of the related logger.relate.* tables.

Using Phalcon Model as a stand-alone, I have 7 models, one for the main table and 6 for the relationship tables:

• Log
• LogRelateCarrier
• ...

In the Log model class I used the hasMany() method to set a 1-n relationship; in the other model classes I used the belongsTo() method for n-1 relationships.

My question: is there a way in Phalcon to directly handle scenarios like this one, so that I'd be able to get as log record actor's ID just by doing something like:

$log        = Log::findFirst(1);
$id_actor   = $log->getIdActor();   // Getter method for actor's ID
$actor_type = $log->getActorType(); // Getter method for actor's type (customer, carrier, etc.)

having the getters very simple, something like (excuse me, I'm really new to this framework):

public function getIdActor() {
    return $this->id_actor;
}

In other words, I would like to know if there's a way in this framework to handle such a scenario without having to script myself other selection routines. And, whenever possible, with some performance (as I'm holding the actor's type in the logger.log class to know which relational table I'll have to query, instead of querying all the relational tables and then computing only the one record from the one only table that holds it).

Finally, I did used so many relational tables as I need the data layer (and not the logic one) to enforce the constraints between the log table and the many different actors external tables.

Hope I explained the situation, thank you very much!

Answer 1

EIDT: After finally getting what was meant, the answer is no. You should use queries or stick with your actual implementation. I don't think the overhead would be too much with your actual implementation.

ORIGINAL: I'm not quite sure i understood your question correctly.

You want to select a related model from inside your Model? If so, you can use the belongsTo and hasMany to create a alias. The last parameter of both methods is a array:

array(
  'alias' => 'yourAlias'
)

Now you can use $log->yourAlias->getIdActor();