Move this function out of your model. If it needs a DB lookup, where is better than Model context?
Yes, indeed, this is the best way to solve the problem.
Currently your User class violates single responsibility principle which basically, says "one task - one class".
Right now your User describes user entity/state and handles persistence (in your case - retrieval from database). See, two things.
I suggest you create another class that is going to handle persistence tasks, like add/update/delete user. The simplest solution is to create a primitive repostitory, like this:
<?php class UserRepository { public function addUser(User $user); public function updateUser(User $user); public function deleteUser(User $user); public function getUserById($id); }
Then retrieval of user can be done in the following manner:
// get an instance of this repository class $userRepository = new UserRepository; // ask it to find and return user from the database by ID $user = $userRepository->getUserById($_GET['id']);
Easy to read, easy to handle, right?
This UserRepository class is actually a primitive implementation of Repository Pattern. UserRepository emulates an in-memory collection of all of your users, hiding implementation inside. It hides actual persistence mechanism from you as user: imagine, your coleague would write this class and you're just using its methods, like UserRepository::getById(1) - you don't even know/care if it grabs data from files/db/API. That's neat. )
This particular implementation is described very clearly in Kristopher Wilson's book "The Clean Architecture in PHP", which I highly recommed for you to read: it will take you two-three evenings, and push you to the next level.
You can extend the list of methods, of course, add lookups, etc.
class UserRepository { public function getByCompany(Company $company); public function getByEmail($email); public function countTotal(); }
In fact, every time you need to grab/add/update user in the database, you should do it via this repository.
I would like to emphasize that this is a simple implementation of the pattern, particularly, if you compare it to what Martin Fowler describes as Repository. However, in most cases it's totally fine.
