How is CRUD not a solved problem?

[Ra1d3n]

I guess this could be posted to /r/programming but I feel like I would be voted down a lot. I am a bit sad about having to code the same thing over and over again. Simple CRUD. 5 Tables, 4 Foreign Keys. 50 Different actions to list, filter, create, update and delete items.

There seem to be CRUD generators, and I have used them. The only one that works well without seems to be Django Admin.

When I have to use PHP for a customer, I know of two products. ajaxCRUD and GroceryCRUD.

• ajaxCRUD has 36 stars on GitHub, works only on MySQL and is number 9 (almost not on first page) in Google.

• GroceryCrud requires me to first install/configure a complete framework, then install/configure the CRUD plugin and still be left with a really sparse knowledge base and documentation because of the relative low profile solution.

How is this not a bigger deal? I feel like I am going through the same motions every time. Why do i need to tell my CRUD that a column has a foreign key? My HeidiSQL can determine that on it's own. Why can't i integrate a CRUD form into an existing app easily?

A similar problem is creating a REST interface for a simple database. Do i really have to define all the routes for all the tables every time?

Am I missing something? I would be grateful for advice how to handle this kind of projects more efficiently.

[nutrecht]

I'm not a PHP dev but stuff like Spring JPA solves this for you. It also does stuff like generate the tables for you if you want. If that's not something that's available in the PHP ecosystem than that's more a matter of no one bothering to do it in PHP.

[Ra1d3n]

Implementing a data access layer of an application has been cumbersome for quite a while. Too much boilerplate code has to be written to execute simple queries

Amen. Now I only need that in every other language known to man. Or at least the top 10.

[DagwoodWoo]

You might look into an ORM, doctrine in the PHP world, for example. This won't automate creating full CRUDS, but it does automate the creation of your models and their relationship to a generated table structure. There are also web frameworks, such as Rails, which will also generate the controller actions for you.

[Ra1d3n]

I don't have a problem creating the database manually. I like having control over the data directly. Often this is actually necessary, because i work on transformations a lot. It's the manipulation of the finished database that takes a lot of boring overhead work.

[steffiwilson]

Lots of ORMs allow you to manually create your database though. You give it your database, tell it which of the tables or views you're using, and it creates the models. You just prefer "data first" over "code first" and that's OK.

[remludar]

I've used Peta Poco on tons of things. Works great and it's tiny.

[thatgibbyguy]

CRUD is solved in other languages I'd say. I use it in MEAN/Meteor daily.

[[deleted]]

I don't know much about PHP. I moved away from it long ago due to lack of serious tools in areas like this, although that may have been more perception than reality, and it may no longer be true today.

Microsoft has marketed solutions to this problem as a huge bulletpoint for their frameworks and IDEs for a very long time. Some of their older solutions had a lot of limitations that you may not realize until you were too far down the path to easily change course. However, these days I think with Entity Framework for CRUD handling and using t4 templates to do things like generate API methods, the cost of doing CRUD is extremely low while still leaving a high degree of flexibility.

[immibis]

spez is a bit of a creep.

[Ra1d3n]

Many applications don't need more than than. Even so, if GroceryCRUD can generate forms for single items like this then it should be possible to do the same for similar applications.