Sample PHP Service selecting from multiple tables

Question

Hi all!
I have the following challange:
How do I properly set up my PHP-service to insert, select, update and delete values from multiple tables?
So far, the standard templates generated by Flash Builder is based on a single table.
Example: I have 2 tables: [person] and [school]
[person] has [person_id, first_name, last_name, birthdate]
[school] has [school_id, person_id, school_name, city]
One [person] can have multiple [schools]
How should I define the selectByID function in PHP to be able to have
First name: [TextInput /]
Last name: [TextInput /]
Birthdate: [DateField /]
Schools:
[TabBar: School1, School2, School3 /]
[ViewStack1]
School name: [TextInput /]
Location name: [TextInput /]
[/ViewStack1]]
[ViewStack2]
School name: [TextInput /]
Location name: [TextInput /]
[/ViewStack2]]
[ViewStack3]
School name: [TextInput /]
Location name: [TextInput /]
[/ViewStack3]]
And even more interesting: How do I update all these fields back to the database?

Answer 1

First, the relationship between school and person is many-to-many NOT one-to-many -- you will need to add a junction table.
From the form you have given I would handle insertions like this:
loop through all the schools and see if the school already exist in the DB. If so, then store the school_id. If not, then create a new record and store the id. You should have an array collection of store_ids by the end of the loop
Check whether the student exists w/in the DB. If so, then you might consider aborting the operation or you could opt to do an update. If the student doesn't exist, then create a new student record and store the new student_id (mysql::insert_id)
Loop through the school_id array and add new student_id/school_id records into the junction table.
Retrieving records is much simpler -- it's just a join on the tables i.e. "SELECT * FROM student INNER JOIN school_student ON student.student_id = school_student.student_id INNER JOIN schools ON school_student.school_id = school.school_id WHERE student.first_name = 'John' AND student.last_name = 'Doe' (assuming there aren't more than one John Does of course!).
- e