Custom Fetch

Brief

The purpose of a custom fetch is to have an organized way to retrive data from a given data source. You mainly call a custom fetch function from templates.

The eZ Publish framework already provide a lot of different fetch functions out-of-the-box using the information extraction system.

You can also create your own custom fetch functions from within your own custom module extension.

Example

The following example is based on the example given by Bruce Morrison on the ez.no forums.

File: extension/ourcustom/modules/ourcustom/function_definition.php

<?php

$FunctionList = array();
$FunctionList['CustomFetch'] = array( 'name' => 'customfetch',
                                                  'operation_types' => array( 'read' ),
                                                  'call_method' => array( 'include_file' => 'extension/ourcustom/modules/ourcustom/ourcustomfunctioncollection.php',
                                                  'class' => 'OurCustomFunctionCollection',
                                                  'method' => 'fetchCustomFetch' ),
                                                  'parameter_type' => 'standard',
                                                  'parameters' => array(
                                                    array( 'name'     => 'the',
                                                               'type'     => 'integer',
                                                                'required' => true,
                                                                'default'  => 1
                                                      ),
                                                      array( 'name'     => 'params',
                                                                 'type'     => 'string',
                                                                 'required' => true,
                                                                 'default'  => ''
                                                              )
                                                      );
?>

Please note that the values associated with the keys 'name', 'operation_types' and 'parameter_type' are not used anywhere by eZ Publish itself.

Since eZ Publish 4, the 'include_file' key of the 'call_method' array is deprecated and won't be used anymore. Instead, the module system relies on the PHP 5 autoload feature.

File: extension/ourcustom/modules/ourcustom/ourcustomfunctioncollection.php

<?php

class OurCustomFunctionCollection
{
 function OurCustomFunctionCollection()
 {
 }
 function &fetchCustomFetch( $some, $params )
 {
   $result =& retrieve data here
   return array( 'result' => $result );
 }
}

?>

File: extension/ourcustom/settings/module.ini.append.php

<?php /* #?ini charset="utf-8"?

[ModuleSettings]
ExtensionRepositories[]=ourcustom
ModuleList[]=ourcustom


*/ ?>

Usage

This page of documentation clearly explains how to call and use fetch functions (custom or default) using the information extraction system.

{def $collection=fetch( ourcustom, customfetch, hash( the, params ) )}

References

• Doc: Fetch
• Forum: Custom fetch functions
• Forum: How to do a fetch with PHP
• Contribution: An example custom fetch module extension, bccontentdiffnotifications