For our previous app, which was just user profiles, we only created a simple Create-Read-Update-Delete (CRUD) database abstraction layer - basic stuff. In this chapter, we will create a better database abstraction layer that will allow us to do more than just basic database functions.
Aside from the simple CRUD features, we will add result manipulation into the mix. We'll build the following features into our database abstraction class:
Conversion of integers to other, more accurate numeric types
Array to object conversion
firstOf()
method: Allows us to select the first of the results of a database querylastOf()
method: Allows us to select the last of the results of a database queryiterate()
method: Will allow us to iterate over the results and return it in a format we will send to this functionsearchString()
method: looks for a string in a list of results
We may add more functions as and when we might need them. Towards the end of...