#summary An overview of the ActiveRecord design pattern.
#labels Pattern

= The !ActiveRecord Design Pattern =

== Introduction ==

!ActiveRecord is a design pattern that provides an object-oriented wrapper around a single database record. This makes common tasks such as inserting, updating, and deleting as easy as calling a method on an object.

== Common Implementations ==

Implementations vary as almost all programmers interpret the pattern differently. A very common interface would be the following:

{{{
<?php

interface Example_ActiveRecord_Interface
{
    function read();
    function save();
    function delete();
}

?>
}}}

== External Links ==

  * [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveRecord Wikipedia's ActiveRecord Entry]
  * [http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/activeRecord.html Martin Fowler's Explanation]
  * [http://nmariz.estadias.com/archives/31 Nuno Mariz's Implementation] ([http://nmariz.estadias.com/files/images/activerecord_part_1.gif UML])
  * [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ActiveRecord Ruby on Rails' Implementation]
  * [http://manual.cakephp.org/chapter/models CakePHP's Implementation]