would redbeanphp's bean can server be a useful orm for knockout (using the mapping plugin?). i have (or will have) a mysql database with many one to many, many to many, and one to one relationships. i would like to edit a record and all its related data as an object in a single form based interface.
as far as the ui is concerned, i would be working with a nested json object, viewing it in html, and editing it using form element templates, adding them to the dom as needed.
beancan server (or simply the export/import functions) would convert beans into json objects (and vice versa), knockout would handle the modifications to the object. beancan server would then manage the crud functions with the mysql database. i know, i should probably be using a schemaless database like couchdb or somesuch, but in this case it isn't an option.
is this outrageous? or possible workable? i can't seem to locate any round trip examples with any complexity for redbean, so i don't know if this makes sense or not. i've had a lot of success with frameworks -- not being a programmer for the most part, but able to grasp a concept if given a concrete example to work from. any help would be greatly appreciated.
I've never used redbean before, but as an avid KnockoutJS user, I can tell you this sounds reasonable.
You're converting your model objects to JSON, manipulating them in the UI via KnockoutJS, then sending them back to the server for saving.
That's perfectly reasonable and is typically how we do things, no matter the ORM. Really, the ORM should not affect the UI tech you use. And in this case, as long as your objects can be converted to/from JSON, you should be just fine.