ORM and Multiple Environments

Communities ColdBox HMVC
1

I've been trying to use ORM for my service layer in my project. And I've got 3 environments - dev, staging and production. The Problem with using ORM is that Wirebox Injection does not kick in when ORM settings are setup (from Application.cfc)

My Application.cfc has got this currently.

this.ormsettings = {
      cfclocation = "model",
      dialect = "MySQLwithInnoDB",
      dbcreate = "none",
      eventHandling = true,
      logSQl = true,
      autoManageSession = false,
      flushAtRequestEnd = false,
      eventHandler = "model.ORMEventHandler"
    };

So all the ORM based stuff depends on this.datasource in Application.cfc, whereas I've got different datasources for each environment in my ColdBox.cfc.

Is there a solution to this problem ?

Please advise.

Anuj Gakhar

2

Why do you have different environments for your database? If you are using MySQL in production (or insert any dbms here) then you should be developing and testing against that. I am not sure why you need separate environments for that, can you elaborate?

3

I have some similar setups.

I detect my environment in onApplicationStart() within Application.cfc. I set my environment into an application variable and in the ColdBox.cfc config I use the detectEnvironment() function to inform ColdBox what env we are in.

public string function detectEnvironment()
{
switch(application.environment)
{
case ‘workstation’: return ‘office’; break;

case ‘development’: return ‘development’; break;

case ‘stage’: return ‘stage’; break;
default:
return ‘production’;
break;
}
}

Also, I use the machine name(s) to detect environment using:
application.machine = createObject(‘java’,‘java.net.InetAddress’).getLocalHost().getHostName()

Especially on dev server(s) I have found this avoids errors when some IP scanning bot comes by and passes an invalid hostname.

-A

4

Dan,

It’s the datasource name that differs based on which environment I am in

On development (locally) - I have datasource = “mydsn” - pointing to a local Mysql Server
On staging (on the actual server) - the datasource = “mydsn_staging” - pointing to a different database in the MySQl Server
And on Production - datasource = “mydsn_live” - pointing to the LIVE Mysql database

5

Aaron,

That sounds great. So I assume you change the “datasource” in this.ORMSettings in Application.cfc in onApplicationStart() as well?

6

Yes.

ColdFusion itself is a great framework. I try to use it.

-A

7

Thanks Aaron :slight_smile:

8

I’ve got another scenario with this ORM stuff. I have 2 different databases that my application works with. The separation is mainly based around users. So, the user accounts sit in a separate database and the rest of the stuff sits in a separate database. And the same DB user has access to both.

In my application.cfc, this.datasource = “main_dsn” - which points to the other DB, not the users DB. Now, in a normal CF query, I can simply do queries like below, if I was to access the User info :-

select r.id, r.rating from tblratings r
inner join users_development.tbluser u on u.id = r.userid

this cross-database query can access the data from Users DB just fine.

However, in ORM, I have managed to achieve this by using the “catalog” attribute on the persistent CFC.

So, my User.cfc looks like this

component persistent=“true” output=“false” entityname=“User” table=“tbluser” catalog=“users_development”
{
property name=“id” fieldtype=“id” generator=“identity”;
property name=“username” ormtype=“string”;
property name=“firstname” ormtype=“string”;
property name=“lastname” ormtype=“string”;
property name=“email” ormtype=“string”;

public User function init() output=“false”
{
return this;
}
}

Now, this works OK if there was only one environment. How can I manage multiple environments in this setup? I can change this.datasource in Application.cfc based on which environment I am in but how do I change the “catalog” attribute based on which environment I am in ? The problem only happens when I have multiple environments on the same server, otherwise it’s OK.