Data Objects

In the context of a CMS using documents containing data very often is not enough, because they make it hard to work with structured content or data input from external systems. In order to efficiently work with structured content in the context of product information management (PIM), content needs to be grouped into predefined units of data. In pimcore this is accomplished with data objects.

Data objects are literally objects in the sense of object oriented programming. They can be defined through a user friendly graphical user inteface (GUI), but nevertheless in the background a plain php class is created, which can profit from inheritance and can be utilized and accessed programmatically. Data objects can be instantiated and filled in pimcore or they can be served from external systems like CRM, ERP, PIM or asset management systems.

The following code snippet indicates how to access, create and modify an object programmatically:

 $myObject = Object_Myclassname::getById(167);
$myObject->getName();
$myObject->getDescription();

// ... or you can modifiy data directly with PHP

$myObject->setName("My Name");
$myObject->save();


// it's also possible to get an object by an foreign ID
$city = Object_City::getByZip(5020,1);


// you can also get an object by id where you don't know the type
$object = Object_Abstract::getById(235);


// or obtain an object by path
$object = Object_Abstract::getByPath("/path/to/the/object");

// Create a new object
$newObject = Object_Myclassname::create(array(
    'name'        => 'New Name',
    'description' => 'Some description'
));
$newObject->setKey(Pimcore_File::getValidFilename('New Name'));
$newObject->setParentId(123);
$newObject->save();

How object classes are defined and how objects can be listed and batch processed can be found in the following sections about classes, lists and external system interaction