MongoDB and PHP

Chapter 4. PHP Libraries and Tools

I hope that by now, you’ve become excited about how nice the MongoDB driver is to use. We at 10gen have worked extremely hard to make the developer experience as pleasant as possible.

While the MongoDB driver makes it quite easy to use MongoDB from within PHP, you may prefer to add another level of abstraction, particularly with larger applications. One reason for doing so would be to standardize document structure across the application, including data validation.

Many PHP libraries exist to work with MongoDB. I have selected only a handful that I have experience with and that I feel are viable solutions. This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive but rather to introduce the reader to libraries that may be able to help them with their projects. I am not endorsing any of these libraries—merely introducing them as potential solutions for the reader.

Object Document Mappers (ODM)

A number of solid Object Document Mappers (ODMs) exist for PHP. The concept is similar to the ORM, but the implementation is significantly different. The ODMs are considerably lighter than any ORM and much much faster. I’ve listed a few I have experience with here.

Note

Disclaimer: Doctrine development is sponsored by OpenSky, the social ecommerce website, where I worked as the VP of engineering. In spite of this relationship, I’ve endeavored to be as impartial as possible in my introduction to these libraries.

Doctrine MongoDB ODM

Doctrine was the first viable ORM for PHP. Unlike prior ...