Activerecord-association: create new object (find class)

Question

I have an model with a relation, and I want to instantiate a new object of the relations type.

Example: A person has a company, and I have a person-obje

Answer 1

In PHPActiveRecord, you have access to the relations array. The relation should have a name an you NEED TO KNOW THE NAME OF THE RELATIONSHIP/ASSOCIATION YOU WANT. It doesn't need to be the classname, but the classname of the Model you're relating to should be explicitly indicated in the relation. Just a basic example without error checking or gritty relationship db details like linking table or foreign key column name:

class Person extends ActiveRecord\Model {
    static $belongs_to = array(
                       array('company',
                                 'class_name' => 'SomeCompanyClass')
                                 );
    //general function get a classname from a relationship
    public static function getClassNameFromRelationship($relationshipName)       
       foreach(self::$belongs_to as $relationship){
          //the first element in all relationships is it's name
          if($relationship[0] == $relationshipName){
             $className = null;
                if(isset($relationship['class_name'])){
                  $className = $relationship['class_name'];
                }else{
                  // if no classname specified explicitly,
                  // assume the clasename is the relationship name
                  // with first letter capitalized
                  $className = ucfirst($relationship);
                }
                return $className               
            }
        }   
        return null;
     }
}

To with this function, if you have a person object and want an object defined by the 'company' relationship use:

$className = $person::getClassNameFromRelationship('company');
$company = new $className();