doctrine/orm 2.16.0

The Doctrine ORM (Object-Relational-Mapper) is a highly powerful database abstraction tool for PHP 7.1+ that allows for transparent persistence of PHP objects. It offers a proprietary Object Oriented SQL dialect, known as Doctrine Query Language (DQL), which was inspired by Hibernate’s HQL. This allows developers to write database queries with more flexibility, without creating redundant code.

Using Doctrine ORM in a PHP application involves a few key steps. First, you need to install it using Composer. This can be achieved by running the following command in your terminal: composer require doctrine/orm.

Once installed, you can setup the EntityManager, which is the primary access point to ORM functionality provided by Doctrine:

<?php
require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Setup;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;

$paths = array("/path/to/entity-files");
$isDevMode = false;

// the connection configuration
$dbParams = array(
    'driver'   => 'pdo_mysql',
    'user'     => 'root',
    'password' => 'password',
    'dbname'   => 'mydb',
);

$config = Setup::createAnnotationMetadataConfiguration($paths, $isDevMode);
$entityManager = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

And then interact with your database using Doctrine's API:

<?php
// src/Product.php
/** @Entity */
class Product
{
    /**
     * @var int
     * @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @var string
     * @Column(type="string")
     */
    private $name;
    
    //.. (add getters and setters here)
}

In the above code the notation /** @Entity */ is a Doctrine annotation marking this class as an entity class.

More about associative mappings, fetching objects, querying, and more can be found in the official documentation.

For complete details on how to use the Doctrine ORM, you can refer to the project's extensive documentation. This comprehensive guide provides detailed instructions and examples to help you harness the full power of the Doctrine ORM in your PHP applications.