Best way to handle dirty state in an ORM model

Question

I don\'t want anyone saying \"you should not reinvent the wheel, use an open source ORM\"; I have an immediate requirement and cannot switch.

I\'m doing a l

Answer 1

I would make a proxy to set for example:

class BaseModel {

   protected function _set($attr, $value) {
      $current = $this->_get($attr);
      if($value !== $current) {
         $this->is_dirty = true;
      }

      $this->$attr = $value;
   }
}

Then each child class would implemnt its setter by calling _set() and never set the property directly. Further, you can always inject more class specific code into each sub class's _set and just call parent::set($attr, $processedValue) if needed. Then if you want to use magic methods you make those proxy to property method that proxies to _set. I suppose this isnt very POPO though.