Make all entities identifiable #46

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opened 2026-09-09 06:29:05 +02:00 by c.fahner · 0 comments

c.fahner commented

2026-09-09 06:29:05 +02:00

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Currently entities have to opt-in to being identifiable (ie. having a unique 'id' field) by implementing the Identifiable interface. This results in code working with entities being littered with instanceof checks for Identifiable even though this is the most common case.

The Schema object already allows classes that are not Entity's, so forcing all entities to have an 'id' field does not make it impossible to make schemas from non-identifiable objects nor does it disallow referencing such objects from other schemas. What would need to change is the way non-entities are referenced by a foreign key, as the Entity interface can't be used as a marker anymore.

Therefor, the Entity\Identifiable interface should be merged with the Entity interface to improve the common case.

Currently entities have to opt-in to being identifiable (ie. having a unique 'id' field) by implementing the `Identifiable` interface. This results in code working with entities being littered with `instanceof` checks for `Identifiable` even though this is the most common case. The `Schema` object already allows classes that are not `Entity`'s, so forcing all entities to have an 'id' field does not make it impossible to make schemas from non-identifiable objects nor does it disallow referencing such objects from other schemas. What would need to change is the way non-entities are referenced by a foreign key, as the `Entity` interface can't be used as a marker anymore. Therefor, the `Entity\Identifiable` interface should be merged with the `Entity` interface to improve the common case.

c.fahner added this to the v0.2 milestone

2026-09-09 06:29:05 +02:00

c.fahner added the

Compat/Breaking

label

2026-09-09 06:29:05 +02:00

c.fahner added spent time

2026-09-15 16:43:02 +02:00

30 minutes

c.fahner referenced this issue from a pull request that will close it,

2026-09-15 16:50:54 +02:00

Make all entities identifiable #59