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• 5. Implement the legacy storage engine

Step 5 - Implement the Legacy Storage Engine Converter

Tip

You can find all files used and modified in this step on GitHub.

So far, the Field Type's value is represented by the Tweet\Value class. It holds a semantic representation of the type's data: a URL, an author URL and the tweet's content.

The next step is to tell the system how to store it.

About converters

eZ Platform supports multiple storage engines. The main one is the Legacy storage engine, based on the legacy database, with a new implementation. Since each storage engine may have its own way of storing data, you need to map each Field Type value to something legacy can understand.

You will implement a Field Type Converter, each storage engine defining its own interface for those.

Legacy Field Type converters

The Legacy storage engine uses the ezcontentobject_attribute table to store Field values, and ezcontentclass_attribute to store Field definition values (settings, etc.). They are both based on the same principle.

Each row represents a Field or a Field definition, and offers several free fields of different types, where the type can store its data:

• ezcontentobject_attribute offers three fields for this purpose:
  • data_int
  • data_text
  • data_float
• ezcontentclass_attribute offers a few more:
  • four data_int (data_int1 to data_int4) fields
  • four data_float (data_float1 to data_float4) ones
  • five data_text (data_text1 to data_text5)

Each type is free to use those fields in any way it requires. Converters will map a Field's semantic values to the fields described above, for both settings (validation and configuration) and value.

Implementing Tweet\LegacyConverter

The Converter will be placed alongside the Type and Value definitions (the kernel stores them inside the Legacy Storage Engine structure): eZ/Publish/FieldType/Tweet/LegacyConverter.php.

A Legacy Converter must implement the eZ\Publish\Core\Persistence\Legacy\Content\FieldValue\Converter interface:

<?php
// TweetFieldTypeBundle/eZ/Publish/FieldType/Tweet/LegacyConverter.php

namespace EzSystems\TweetFieldTypeBundle\eZ\Publish\FieldType\Tweet;

use eZ\Publish\Core\Persistence\Legacy\Content\FieldValue\Converter;

class LegacyConverter implements Converter
{
}

The Converter interface expects you to implement five methods:

• toStorageValue() and toFieldValue() used to convert an API field value to a legacy storage value, and a legacy storage value to an API field value.
• toStorageFieldDefinition() and toFieldDefinition() used to convert a field definition to a legacy one, and a stored legacy field definition to an API field definition.
• getIndexColumn() tells the API which legacy database field should be used to sort and filter content, either sort_key_string or sort_key_int.

Implementing Field Value converters: toFieldValue() and toStorageValue()

As said above, those two methods are used to convert from a Field to a value that Legacy can store, and the other way around.

You have defined that you wanted to store the tweet's URL in data_text, and that sorting would be done on the username-status-tweetid string you extract in getName() and getSortInfo().

toStorageValue() will fill the provided eZ\Publish\Core\Persistence\Legacy\Content\StorageFieldValue from a Tweet\Value, while toFieldValue() will do the opposite:

use eZ\Publish\Core\Persistence\Legacy\Content\StorageFieldValue;
use eZ\Publish\SPI\Persistence\Content\FieldValue;

// [...]

public function toStorageValue(FieldValue $value, StorageFieldValue $storageFieldValue)
{
    $storageFieldValue->dataText = json_encode($value->data);
    $storageFieldValue->sortKeyString = $value->sortKey;
}

public function toFieldValue(StorageFieldValue $value, FieldValue $fieldValue)
{
    $fieldValue->data = json_decode($value->dataText, true);
    $fieldValue->sortKey = $value->sortKeyString;
}

With these two methods, the legacy storage engine is able to convert a Tweet\Value into legacy data, and legacy data back into a Tweet\Value object.

Implementing Field Definition converters: toStorageFieldDefinition() and toFieldDefinition()

The first two methods you have implemented apply to a Field's value, but you also need to convert the Field's definition. For example, a TextLine's max length, or any FieldDefinition option.

This is done using toStorageDefinition() that converts a FieldDefinition into a StorageFieldDefinition. toFieldDefinition() does the opposite. In this case, you actually don't need to implement those methods since the Tweet Type doesn't have settings:

use eZ\Publish\Core\Persistence\Legacy\Content\StorageFieldDefinition;
use eZ\Publish\SPI\Persistence\Content\Type\FieldDefinition;

// [...]

public function toStorageFieldDefinition(FieldDefinition $fieldDef, StorageFieldDefinition $storageDef)
{
}

public function toFieldDefinition(StorageFieldDefinition $storageDef, FieldDefinition $fieldDef)
{
}

Implementing getIndexColumn()

In toFieldValue() and toStorageValue() you have used the sortKeyString property from StorageFieldValue. getIndexColumn() will provide the legacy storage engine with the type of index / sort column it should use: string (sort_key_string) or int (sort_key_int). Depending on which one is returned, the system will either use the sortKeyString or the sortKeyInt properties from the StorageFieldValue.

public function getIndexColumn()
{
    return 'sort_key_string';
}

Registering the converter

Just like a Type, a Legacy Converter needs to be registered and tagged in the service container.

The tag is ezpublish.storageEngine.legacy.converter, and it requires an alias attribute to be set to the Field Type identifier (eztweet). Add this block to Resources/config/fieldtypes.yml:

services:
# declaration of the Field Type service
# ...
    ezsystems.tweetbundle.fieldtype.eztweet.converter:
        class: EzSystems\TweetFieldTypeBundle\eZ\Publish\FieldType\Tweet\LegacyConverter
        tags:
            - {name: ezpublish.storageEngine.legacy.converter, alias: eztweet}