Simple application to manage your employees (or other entities) stored in a single XML file "the Laravel way"
(using Eloquent, Orbit and custom SingleFileDriver / Xml driver).
Flat file XML database is stored in storage/database.
- PHP
^7.3|^8.0 - composer
- NodeJS
^12
- clone the repository
- execute
composer install - copy the
.env.examplefile as.env - execute
php artisan key:generate - execute
npm ci - execute
npm run production - execute
php artisan db:seed(optional, can be executed multiple times, seeds sample data) - execute
php artisan serve - navigate to
http://localhost:8000
Have fun!
It is possible to easily change the flat database schema by editing any model's schema() function if the database is currently empty.
Modifying the schema with some data present can cause unintended side effects, it is advised to execute orbit:clear and orbit:fresh artisan commands before modifications.
Customising the employees listing, filtering and / or form involves editing the appropriate controllers / views / FormRequests.
Filtering is implemented as a bundle of ready-made fluent filters in the App\Support\ListingFilter namespace.
Orbit uses SQLite to cache all flat database data before use. This allows us to access flat file data conviniently using Eloquent as if it was stored in a relational database.
Moreover, Orbit guarantees our flat database will be always up-to-date with any changes made, and will automatically refresh it's SQLite cache when the underlying flat file driver indicates so.
Normally, Orbit stores all model's data in separate files. It is trivial to implement Xml driver in this way, as Orbit doesn't come bundled with one.
However, when the requirement is to store all model's data in a single file, SingleFileDriver was implemented.
This driver implements the Orbit\Contracts\Driver interface and expects all subsequent file format drivers to operate on array of models
instead of on separate files.
With SingleFileDriver, any file format driver has to implement only 3 methods:
abstract protected function extension(): string;abstract protected function load(string $file): array;abstract protected function store(string $file, array $models): bool;
The Xml driver makes use of spatie/array-to-xml library when writing the XML
file, and uses a custom implementation to read the models back using SimpleXMLElement. Custom implementation had to be used since no suitable "xml-to-array" libraries were found to consistently handle our XML format.