Schema API feedback

[roll]

Overview

Based on this readme listing I'm adding feedback based on existent implementations and expected lib user competencies (as we target many almost non-tech users - publisher, data wranglers etc).

// validate and cast a row according to schema
$schema = new Schema('{"fields": ["name": "id", "type": "integer"]}');
$row = $schema->castRow(["id" => "1"]);
// raise exception if row fails validation
// returns row with all native values

// EditableSchema extends the Schema object with editing capabilities
$schema = new EditableSchema();
// set fields
$schema->fields([
    "id" => FieldsFactory::field((object)["name" => "id", "type" => "integer"])
]);
// remove field
$schema->removeField("age");
// edit primaryKey
$schema->primaryKey(["id"]);

// after every change - schema is validated and will raise Exception in case of validation errors
// finally, you can save the schema to a json file
$schema->save("my-schema.json");

Schema vs EditableSchema?

Consider as a {DATA WRANGLER} I create $schema = new Schema('{"fields": ["name": "id", "type": "integer"]}'); in REPL then just decide to edit it. So having a deal with two type of schemas could be not very user-friendly. In other languages editable objects don't have this separation.

Accept PHP array?

It's actual for all Table/Schema/Field APIs

For now schema descriptor should be either object, json-string or url-path:

Schema objects can be constructed using any of the following:

php object
string containing json
string containg value supported by file_get_contents 

Not sure do I understand PHP correctly here or not but why we can't write (using Field example):

FieldsFactory::field(["name" => "id", "type" => "integer"])

instead of casting to object first:

FieldsFactory::field((object)["name" => "id", "type" => "integer"])

I suppose it could be handled inside class (cast to object) but reduce usage errors.

[OriHoch]

fixed and merged to latest draft release v0.1.6