Reference Manual - UML2PHP

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UML2PHP 

Reference Manual 

Version of 2008-02-18 

BITPlan GmbH Pater-Delp-Str. D-47877 Willich 

Tel. 02154 / 811-480 Fax 02154 / 811-481 Web: www.bitplan.de E-Mail: info@bitplan.de

UML2PHP Reference Manual 

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Content 

© Copyright 2004-2008 BITPlan GmbH. All rights reserved. 

Y:\Source\Java\com\bitplan\uml2php\doc\UML2PHP-ReferenceManual.doc 

Trademarks 

MySQL and the MySQL Logo a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European 

Union and other countries 

Poseidon is a registered trademark of Gentleware AG in Germany, USA and other countries 

Rational Rose® is a registered trademark of IBM Rational 

CORBA UML and MDA are trademarks of Object Management Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other 

countries 

Windows may or may not be a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in some or another country 

All other company, brand, and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders. 

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© 2004-2008 BITPlan GmbH


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Content 

Content 

Content ................................................................................................................................3 

1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................5 

1.1 What is UML2PHP?.................................................................................................5 

1.2 What do I need to use UML2PHP?..........................................................................5 

1.3 Where can I get UML2PHP?....................................................................................5 

1.4 Who created UML2PHP?.........................................................................................5 

1.5 How is UML2PHP implemented?.............................................................................6 

1.6 Organization of the UML2PHP documentation ........................................................6 

1.7 Further documentation.............................................................................................6 

1.8 Notation rules...........................................................................................................7 

2 UML2PHP base concepts..............................................................................................8 

2.1 Summary .................................................................................................................8 

2.2 Object Oriented Modelling and UML........................................................................8 

2.3 Who’s Who of UML2PHP.........................................................................................9 

3 UML2PHP Features.....................................................................................................12 

3.1 Summary ...............................................................................................................12 

3.2 PHP5 Code generation by mapping UML2PHP.....................................................12 

3.3 System Configuration.............................................................................................22 

3.4 User, Login and Session Support ..........................................................................24 

3.5 Menu and Functioncall Definition and handling .....................................................24 

3.6 Business object Catalogs and Business object Forms...........................................25 

3.7 Catalogs.................................................................................................................25 

3.8 Forms.....................................................................................................................26 

3.9 Selection Catalogs .................................................................................................27 

3.10 Dynamic Form handling ......................................................................................28 

3.11 SQL Database Support (Object-Relational mapping) .........................................28 

3.12 Test Support / Design for Testability...................................................................30 

3.13 Autoloading of PHP classes................................................................................31 

3.14 W3C conforming HTML code support and pretty printing ...................................31 

3.15 Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) support................................................................32 

3.16 N:M relation support............................................................................................32 

3.17 Platform independent code generation ...............................................................33 

4 Inheritance support ......................................................................................................34 

4.1 What is inheritance? ..............................................................................................34 

4.2 Examples ...............................................................................................................34 

5 UML2PHP architectural Support for inheritance ..........................................................38 

5.1 Overview................................................................................................................38 

5.2 UML to PHP language mapping for inheritance.....................................................38 

5.3 UML to generic architecture mapping ....................................................................38 

5.4 Object relational mapping / mapping UML inheritance to the database structure..39 

5.5 Mapping the UML inheritance to the GUI representation / Forms..........................44 

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6 Generator.....................................................................................................................45 

6.1 Application Wizard .................................................................................................45 

6.2 Commandline Version of Generators.....................................................................45 

6.3 Generator Transaction Dialog................................................................................48 

6.4 Error Handling........................................................................................................49 

7 Appendix......................................................................................................................52 

7.1 Abbreviations .........................................................................................................52 

7.2 Bibliography ...........................................................................................................52 

7.3 Web-Links..............................................................................................................53 

8 Index............................................................................................................................54 

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Introduction 

1 Introduction 

1.1 What is UML2PHP? 

UML2PHP is a tool for creating PHP5 code for web applications by the push of a button. 

From a single model source it will create 

PHP5 object oriented code 

A database structure that can be used for SQL and XML database storage 

Form and field definitions to edit records derived from UML classes 

Catalog definitions to search and browse multiple records for a UML class 

UML2PHP uses the smartGENERATOR technology to do all this. This technology is a 

100% pure Java based system that allows to specify how the resulting code should look 

like using templates. While using the community or professional editions of UML2PHP 

you’ll only see the results of this technology. The enterprise edition of UML2PHP allows to 

modify the basic templates and the way the code is generated. 

The UML2PHP base framework is an OpenSource project hosted on SourceForge.net. 

You’ll find the project by searching for “uml2php” in SourceForge. The base framework is 

licensed under the BSD license – so it may be used for commercial purposes as long as 

you supply the copyright notice of BITPlan. 

1.2 What do I need to use UML2PHP? 

You’ll need 

Windows or Linux as an operating system 

Apache as a Webserver 

A MySQL database server as a Database 1 with SQL View support – mySQL5.0 is 

fine for this. mySQL 4.0 is still supported in Version 1.3c but the support is 

deprecated and limits the possibility to have inheritance support. 

PHP5 

A Java runtime environment to run the code generator 

A UML tool like Poseidon 

1.3 Where can I get UML2PHP? 

At http://www.uml2php.com you’ll find all the resources needed to download, try, buy 

and get support for UML2PHP. 

1.4 Who created UML2PHP? 

UML2PHP was created by BITPlan GmbH, Germany http://www.bitplan.com 

1 We support other databases using PEAR:DB 

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Introduction 

1.5 How is UML2PHP implemented? 

UML2PHP is implemented using the Y-Principle MDA approach 

1.6 Organization of the UML2PHP documentation 

The UML2PHP documentation consists of the following documents: 

Readme 

this HTML 2 document contains a brief description and points to all relevant 

resources necessary to obtain information around UML2PHP – you’ll find contact 

information for BITPlan and other UML2PHP links there. 

User Manual 

description of installation and general use of UML2PHP – you might want to read 

this document before you start using UML2PHP. 

Tutorial 

a step by step introduction to use UML2PHP along a list of simple examples that 

get more sophisticated with every step. 

Reference Manual 

the reference Manual describes all the features and the technical background for 

UML2PHP – it’s intend for developers would like to use all the bells and whistles of 

UML2PHP. There is also a list of abbreviations used, recommended literature and 

the biggest index of all documents 

Release Notes 

this HTML document list all the information about changes between different 

versions of UML2PHP. You can find out which features are supported by your 

version and which bugs have been fixed. 

1.7 Further documentation 

1.7.1 PHPDoc 

You’ll find the PHP Doc HTML based documentation for UML2PHP in the htdoc 

subdirectory or the UML2PHP installation directory. On Windows Systems there is also a 

start-menu entry “phpdoc Documentation” available. 

1.7.2 Background information 

The following documents are available in the doc subdirectory of the UML2PHP installation 

directory: 

Requirements.pdf – the orignal requirements document for UML2PHP – it contains 

all requirements and acceptance test descriptions from the smartRQM 3 

requirements-database. This document was generated from this database. 

2 HTML Hypertext Markup Language 

3 a requirements tracing tool by BITPlan 

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Introduction 

 

phpbobase.pdf – the original UML model printout – this document was generated 

from the UML architecture model that is the basis of UML2PHP 

1.8 Notation rules 

!!! stands for things that are deprecated or need change. We use this symbol to quickly 

find these spots in this documentation. 

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UML2PHP base concepts 

2 UML2PHP base concepts 

2.1 Summary 

UML2PHP is based on the following concepts: 

Object oriented modelling using UML – the unified modelling language 

The idea of Business objects 

The platform independent data type definitions of the CORBA IDL – the common 

object request broker interface definition language 4 

Design Patterns 

The y-Principle as a software engineering approach that is user requirements and 

model driven and yields high quality and efficiency 

2.2 Object Oriented Modelling and UML 

As a reference Manual for UML we’ll not dive into the details of object-orientation and 

UML too much. If you’d like to use UML2PHP you should get yourself familiar with the 

base concepts of object orientation: 

Integration of data and its manipulation at a single point of maintenance 

Information hiding using Encapsulation 

Abstraction 

Inheritance and Polymorphism 

4 But UML2PHP does not support any ORB functionality other than the FunctionCall 

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2.3 Who’s Who of UML2PHP 

The following graphic illustrates the Who’s who of UML2PHP: 

GUI 

UML 

User 

DB 

There are four main players: 

The User – he’s the boss and needs to have a nice application that fit’s his needs 

The Form – it displays what the user want’s to see in the GUI / Graphical User 

Interface 

The Table – it stores data from the form as it’s stored in the DB / Database 

The BO/Business Object it allows to manipulate the data involved by the PHP 

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2.3.1 How Data is moved around in UML2PHP 

The following illustration shows how data is moved around from the Database to the 

Businessobject and the Browser and vice versa: 

asSQLValue 

BO 

asDisplayValue 

fromRow 

fromPOST 

Browser 

DB 

The conversion between the different Formats is done in Field.asSQLValue and 

Field.asDisplayValue. So the Business Object (BO) holds the true value of an attribute e.g. 

but it might be stored and shown differently. This is necessary to be able to show and save 

special data like passwords, strings with escape characters, database null values and so 

on. For the way back into the Businessobject BO.fromRow and BO.fromPOST are used. 

These methods undo the conversions that might have happened during the transfer from 

the Business Object to the Browser’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) or the Database. See 

below an excerpt from UML2PHP’s architecture UML model for more details. 

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phpbobase-Architecture model 

WF 2004-04-10 

BO, GUI and database overview 

BO 

fromPOST() 

fromRow() 

fromSESSION() 

Field 

data_type : string 

asDisplayValue() 

asSQLValue() 

getPHPDataType() 

isInStorage() 

isNull() 

phpAttributeName() 

sqlColumnName() 

2.3.2 Null Value handling 

Null values are allowed in databases – but what about PHP and the GUI? In PHP a null 

value is possible in principle you just use “null”. But what data type does null than have? 

The information about the datatype of a field is held in classField. So the nullValue check 

can be done in the field class with the isNull() method. This is necessary since a user 

needs some way to get null values displayed. Currently the null value display is “-“ as 

single dash. When you want an entry to be null in the database you might want to enter a 

“-“ in the field and when storing the record it will automatically be converted to a null. 

The definition for NULL_VALUE_DISPLAY is in classBO.php: 

/** 

* how to display NULL VALUES ... 

*/ 

const NULL_VALUE_DISPLAY = "-"; 

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UML2PHP Features 

3 UML2PHP Features 

3.1 Summary 

UML2PHP has the following main feature groups: 

PHP5 Code generation by mapping UML2PHP 

System Configuration 

User, Login and Session Support 

Menu and Functioncall Definition and handling 

Business object Catalogs and Business object Forms 

Selection Catalogs 

Dynamic Form handling 

SQL Database Support (Object-Relational mapping) 

Test Support / Design for Testability 

Autoloading of PHP classes 

W3C conforming HTML code support and pretty printing 

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) support 

N:M relation support 

Inheritance support (started in Version 1.3 with generating Views!!! 5 ) 

Platform independent code generation 

3.2 PHP5 Code generation by mapping UML2PHP 

3.2.1 Summary 

The code generation for UML2PHP supports the following UML Concepts: 

Packages 

o Namespace 

o Documentation 

o Tagged Values 

Classes 

o Abstraction 

o Inheritance 



DataTypes 


Operations 

o Parameters 

•In-Parameter 

5 The inheritance support is not functional yet – you can only use abstract base tables at 

this time and redundant columns will be generated. !!! It’s intended to implement the 

support as outlined in the inheritance paragraph of this document. 

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•Out-Parameter 

•Return-Value 

o Visibility 



Attributes 

o Types 

o Visibility 


Relations (1:1, 1:n, n:m) 6 

o Multiplicity 

o Roles 

o Navigation 


The code generation for UML2PHP is controlled by a two sets of Tagged Values: 

 

 

BITPlan smartGENERATOR Tagged Value set 

PHP Tagged Value set 

3.2.2 UML package 

A UML package is mapped to a namespace. Since the PHP language as of version 5 does 

not support namespaces directly a namespace prefix for a class is generated to simulate 

namespaces. 

UML concept Code Comment 

… P1_ … 

e.g. 

aPackage 

class P1_aClass 

taggedValue 

packageName=P1 

Please note that the packageName is taken from the surrounding package. E.g. in a 

package hierarchy: com/bitplan/testpackage only the “packagename” taggedValue of the 

Package “testpackage” will be considered to create the namespaceprefix. The “_” is 

automatically inserted between the prefix and the classname. 

If the taggedValue “hasBOManager” of a package is set to true, all classes in the package 

will have “hasBOManager” set to true by default (see list of tagged values for details). 

The documentation of the package is not used for generating anything !!!. 

6 For creating n:m – relations please see Chapter “Modeling conventions” 

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3.2.3 UML class 

A UML class is mapped to one or more PHP 5 classes. For each PHP5 class a separate 

file is generated. 


aClass 

taggedValue 

hasBOManager=false 

aClass 

hasBOManager=true 

class aClass { 

} // aClass 

class aClass extends 

phpbobase_BO { 

} // aClass 

class aClassManager 

extends 

phpbobase_BOManager 

{ 

} // aClassManager 

PHP Doc header code for the class and it’s 

documentation is also generated 

aClass is considered to be a business 

object. The instance attributes and 

operations of aClass are generated into the 

class itself. The static/class attributes and 

operations are generated into the manager 

class. There is an implicit relation between 

the business object and it’s manager class 

3.2.4 UML datatypes 

PHP support for datatypes is poor, in UML it is a key concept. A datatype is either a 

standard datatype like string, integer, double or a user defined datatype. UML2PHP uses 

platform independent type declarations according to the CORBA standard as a basis. So 

you might want to make sure to load the UML CORBA Profile into your UML tool. 

3.2.5 UML operation 

An UML operation is mapped to a PHP function. 

If the class has a BOManager static operations are mapped as non-static! functions of the 

PHP BOManager class and instance operations are mapped as functions of the PHP BO 

class. 

If the class has no BOManager static operations are mapped as static functions of the 

PHP class and instance operations are mapped as non-static functions of the PHP class. 


/** 

PHP Doc header code 

* Operations for Customer 

for the function, it’s 

*/ 

/** 

documentation and 

parameters are also 

* make a new Order for this customer generated 

* @return the new order 

*/ 

public function makeOrder() { 

} // makeOrder 

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3.2.6 UML attributes 

A UML attributes is mapped to a set of PHP getter and setter functions. 


/** 

PHP Doc header code 

* Attributes for Customer 

for the attribute getter 

*/ 

and setter and it’s is 

also generated 

/** 

* @param firstContact the date of the first 

contact; 

*/ 

protected $firstContact; 

public function getfirstContact() { 

} 

return $this->firstContact; 

public function setfirstContact($value) { 

} 

$this->firstContact = $value; 

3.2.7 BITPlan smartGENERATOR stereotype handling 

UML stereotype Description 

Modelelement 

Package do not generate ignore the complete package when generating 

Class Class is the default – will be generated 

Class DataType denotes that the class is a DataType will be ignored when 

generating classes but may be used as a parameter or 

attribute type 

Class Interface not supported yet 

3.2.8 BITPlan smartGENERATOR Tagged Value set 

The BITPlan smartGENERATOR Tagged Value set was originally defined in Rational 

Rose PTY file bitplan.pty. If you use Rational Rose you’ll find bitplan.pty in the 

smartGENERATOR distribution’s 3 rd Party tool directory for Rational Rose. 

UML 

Modelelement 

Tag name Description Value 

range/ 

type 

Model Export-Directory Directory where xmi/csv 

export script should put 

result 

ToolName Name of the tagged value 

set 

Path 

BITPlan, 

PHP, 

Delphi 

Default 

Same as model 

directory 

BITPlan 

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UML 

Modelelement 

Tag name Description Value Default 

range/ 

type 

autogenerate True if the export script boolean false 

should not show a user 

dialog 

XMIId 

Internal tool independend string - 

xmi modelelement id 

XMIBaseId Base id to generate the tool string S100 

independend xmi 

modellement id from 

Package Template Default smartGENERATOR 

generator template class 

name to use for generating 

classes in this package 

TemplateOptions Options for the generator 

template class 

XMIId 

Internal tool independend 

xmi modelelement id 

Class final if true the generated class 

should be final (in Java ..) 

Template Default smartGENERATOR 

generator template class 

name to use for generating 

classes in this package 

TemplateOptions Options for the generator 

template class 

IsGUI 

if true the class data and 

functionality is part of the 

Graphical User Interface 

that should be generated 

(usually a form and catalog 

is generated) 

toolTipText show this text as a tooltip 

for the generated gui 

element of this class (e.g. 

form) 

SQLView use this SQL view to 

display records of that 

belong to this class after 

having generated an SQL 

table for this class 

string - 

string - 

string 

boolean 

string - 

string - 

boolean 

string - 

string - 

false 

true 

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UML 

Modelelement 


range/ 

type 

XMLderived 7 consider this class as boolean false 

derived when mapping to a 

storage system (e.g. XML) 

persistent consider this class as boolean true 

persistent when mapping to 

a storage system (e.g. 

XML) When set to false all 

attributes will be considered 

as non transient 

isSaveable ? boolean false 

Attribute Final if true the generated boolean false 

attribute should be final (in 

Java ..) 

isGUI 

if true the attribute has a boolean false 

mapped counterpart in the 


e.g. a label/field 

combination 

isKey 

if true the attribute is a boolean false 

primary key for the class 

autoKey 8 if true make sure the boolean false 

storage system generates 

automatic new id's for this 

field 

sortPos 

when displaying a catalog integer 0 

of records for this class this 

attribute will be a) used for 

sorting at the given position 

b) used for displaying short 

catalogs (e.g. when 

navigating thru a relation) 

A sortpos must be unique 

within a class 

catalog The name of the selection string - 

7 The name of this tagged value is !!! deprecated !!! it will be changed soon since the prefix 

"XML" is misleading - it is only one of multiple storage concepts that can be used. The 

future name will be storagederived or the behaviour will happen when the standard UML 

"derived" setting is used . 

8 !!! not implemented yet 

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UML 

Modelelement 


range/ 

type 

catalog to use - when this is 

set usually a combobox is 

generated that displays 

choice values from the 

given selection catalog 

catalogtype The type of the catalog: string static 9 

static and dynamic are 

available 

label 

the label to display for this string - 

attributes GUI element. E.g. 

in a label field combination 

the label will show this 

string 

unit 

if set a unit will be displayed string - 

behind the label/field 

combination that is 

generated for this attribute 

isHidden if true the field generated boolean false 

for this attribute will be 

hidden 

isReadonly if true the field generated boolean false 

for this attribute will be 

readonly 

isMandatory if true a value for the field 

generated for this attribute 

must be entered before a 

record can be saved for the 

form of this attribute's class' 

form 

boolean false 

isDefaultSearchFi 

eld 

derivedfrom 10 

if true this field will be used 

as the default search field 

for the search function of 

the catalog that is 

generated 

the value that this attribute 

is derived from 

boolean 

string - 

false 

showInGrid when showing the catalog / boolean true 

9 !!! Will be changed to "-" in a future Version 

10 There is no functionality for this tagged Value yet!!! 

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UML 

Modelelement 

Operation final 


range/ 

type 

database grid for the class 

this attribute should be 

displayed as a column 

charWidth when set use this width for integer 80 

the field instead of the 

default field width 

RegExp 

Regular Expression to use string - 

to verify the field content 

against 

toolTipText show this text as a tooltip string - 

for the generated gui 

element of this attribute 

(e.g. field) 

XMIId 

Internal tool independent string 

model element identifier for 

XMI 

XMLasNode If true use a DOM node as boolean false 

the XML representation for 

the attribute. The default is 

to use an XML attribute 

XMLderived 11 consider this attribute as boolean false 

derived when mapping to a 

storage system (e.g. XML) 

persistent consider this attribute as boolean true 


a storage system (e.g. 

XML) 

selectAction 12 Selection Dialog to use string - 

selectDesc Description to show for the 

selection Dialog 

string - 

if true the generated boolean false 

operation should be final (in 

Java ..) 

XMIId Internal tool independent string 

11 The name of this tagged value is !!! deprecated !!! it will be changed soon since the 

prefix "XML" is misleading - it is only one of multiple storage concepts that can be used. 

The future name will be storagederived or the behaviour will happen when the standard 

UML "derived" setting is used . 

12 Only implemented for the Java GUI generator at this time!!! 

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UML 

Modelelement 

Relation 

Role 


range/ 

type 


XMI 

isGUI 

if true the operation has a boolean false 



e.g. a button 

confirm 

if true the operation must boolean false 

be confirmed by the user 

with a dialog before it is 

invoked from the GUI 

toolTipText show this text as a ToolTip string - 

for the generated graphical 

user interface element of 

this operation (e.g. button) 

icon 

The icon to use for the 

generated gui element for 

this operation (e.g. button) 

string - 

XMIId 

isGUI 

toolTipText 

Internal tool independent 


XMI 

if true the relation has a 



e.g. for each role a tab in a 

tabbed folder or a sub-tree 

show this text as a tool tip 



this relation 

string 

boolean 

string - 

true 

XMIId 

Internal tool independent string 


XMI 

isGUI 

if true the role has a boolean True 


graphical user interface e.g. 

a tab in a tabbed folder or a 

sub-tree 

isHidden if true the field generated boolean false 

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UML 

Modelelement 

Generaliz 

ation 


range/ 

type 

for this Role will be hidden 

isReadonly if true the field generated boolean false 

for this Role will be 

readonly 

showInGrid when showing the catalog / boolean True 

database grid for the class 

this Role should be 

displayed as a column 

transient boolean false 

toolTipText show this text as a tool tip string - 



this role 

icon 

The icon to use for the string - 

generated gui element for 

this role 

persistent consider this role as 


a storage sysem (e.g. XML) 

boolean false 13 

XMIId 

Internal tool independent 


XMI 

string 

3.2.9 PHP Tagged Value set 

The BITPlan smartGENERATOR Tagged Value set was originally defined in Rational 

Rose PTY file php.pty. If you use Rational Rose you’ll find BITPlan.pty in the 

smartGENERATOR distribution’s 3 rd Party tool directory for Rational Rose. 

UML 

Modelelement 

Package 

Tag name Description Value 

range/ 

type 

hasBOManager generate a Business Object boolean 

Manager for all classes in 

the package. A BOManager 

is needed if records for the 

class shall be stored 

Default 

false 

13 The default is set to false to avoid persistence cycles 

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UML 

Modelelement 

Class 


range/ 

type 

packageName generate a namespace 

prefix for all classes in this 

package a "_" will be added 

between the packageName 

and the className 

string - 

hasBOManager generate a Business Object true true 

Manager for this class. A 

BOManager is needed if 

records for the class shall 

be stored 

nextForm if set present a button that string 

allows to submit to the form 

and directly jump to form 

named in this taggedvalue 

Operation byReference Generate a by reference & 

function - that is the return 

parameter for this function 

will be returned by 

reference 

Parameter byReference Generate a by reference & 

parameter - that is this 

parameter will be passed 

by reference 

default 14 generate a default value for 

this parameter so that the 

parameter is optional. If one 

parameter is optional all 

following must be optional 

too! 

3.3 System Configuration 

boolean 

boolean 

string - 

false 

false 

The System Configuration holds values that decide how the application should behave 

regarding a list of global aspects. For each UML2PHP application the values of the 

SystemConfiguration are taken from an include file usually named “config.inc” 15 in the local 

cgi-bin directory. 

14 This feature is not implemented for Poseidon yet!!! 

15 For testcases the filename „test.inc“ is mostly used 

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The configuration sets directly the attributes of the phpbobase class SystemConfiguration 

with some lines of php code: 

SystemConfiguration 

dbmachine : string 

dbsqltype : string 

dbname : string 

dbuser : string 

dbpassword : string 

timeoutSecs : long 

debug : boolean 

checkBoxDisplayLimit : long 

downloadDirectory : string 

certificateFunction : string 

useSSL : boolean 

init(configfilename : string) 

Here is an extract of an example Systemconfiguration include file: 

$this->dbmachine = 'localhost'; 

$this->dbuser 

= 'test'; 

$this->dbpassword = 'testsecret'; 

$this->dbname 

= 'testdb'; 

$this->downloadDirectory = 'com/bitplan/phpbobase/test/genepi/download'; 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$this->timeoutSecs = 600; 

$this->debug 

= true; 

$this->checkBoxDisplayLimit = 5; 

dbmachine, dbsqltype, dbname, dbuser and dbpassword 

describe the database connection that shall be used by your application. 

timeoutSecs 

determines how many seconds a session will be valid before it times out and the 

user will be logged out automatically 

debug 

if debug is set to true it can be used by the programmer to decide whether to 

display debug messages or log debug messages 

checkBoxDisplayLimit 

the number “checkBoxDisplayLimit” will decide when the forms display switches 

from radio buttons in checkBox form to lists for displaying a list. If the number of list 

items is greater than the checkboxDisplayLimit a listbox will show other wise a set 

of radiobuttons 

downloadDirectory 

if set will denote a sessin-specific directory where downloads that should only 

available for the current user can be placed. The contents of this directory are 

automatically removed at the end of the session 

certificateFunction 

if set the user administration will allow to create (SSL)-certificates. When the 

“createCertificate” button is pressed the function for certificate creation specified in 

the Systemconfiguration will be called 

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useSSL 

if set using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) will be mandatory for this application 

3.4 User, Login and Session Support 

3.4.1 The boot process / running in bootmode 

As long as the necessary data is not available in the database, User, Organization and 

UserRole data is taken from three XML files in the subdirectory storage: User.xml, 

Organization.xml and UserRole.xml. These three business objects form a boot group. On 

startup the application checks whether User, Organization and UserRole data is available 

in tables of the SQL database. All three tables must exist and have one entry before the 

bootgroup will be considered active and the application will take User, Organization and 

UserRole information from the database. If the bootgroup is not active, that is one of the 

three tables is missing or has no entries yet, than the XML bootmode is used and the 

information is read in from the three XML files. You’ll see a message saying 

“bootmode - only users from XML file are valid ...” before the login happens: 

If you klick on the link “XML file User.xml”, the XML file is opened and you can see which 

users are valid, for example id="admin" password="secret". 

3.4.2 Forcing a new Session 

If you’d like to make sure that a new session is started when you access your UML2PHP 

application using an URL than you might want to add the URL parameter 

“newsession=true”. This parameter is often used in test-situations. It will force a new 

session to be created. Example: 

http://localhost/com/bitplan/testcase/RQ1030/index.php?newsession=true 

3.5 Menu and Functioncall Definition and handling 

3.5.1 Overview 

After logging into the system the user is known and assigned a default role. This role is 

used to find out what menu should be displayed to the user. The menu is a hierarchy of 

menus with submenus. The atoms of this hierarchy are menuitems. Each menuitem is 

linked to a functioncall. A list of roles can be assigned to a menuitem to decide for which 

roles accessing this menuitem and calling the functioncall should be allowed. 

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3.5.2 The boot process / running in bootmode 

As long as the necessary data is not available in the database, Menu information is taken 

from an XML file in the subdirectory “menu” with the name “rootMenu.xml”. A default 

menu is automatically generated by the Application Wizard. 

3.5.3 Menus& Menuitems 

A Menu can consist of several submenus. Each submenu may contain several Menuitems. 

For each Menuitem a Functioncall definintion and multiple allowed User – Roles can be 

assigned. 

3.6 Business object Catalogs and Business object Forms 

3.6.1 Summary 

UML2PHP uses the following concepts to define forms: 

FormSet - a set of Forms that belong together (e.g. for an application) 

Form - a single Form that may consist of multiple pages 

Page - a page of a form 

Field - a field of a form which might be part of a page or belong to the form directly 

The forms and fields are used two display your business objects in two ways: 

as a single form 

as a catalog 

3.7 Catalogs 

The Catalog ist used to display all available business objects of a certain kind. It allows for 

searching business objects, editing and deleting existing business objects and creating 

new business objects. 

3.7.1 Selection of attributes to show 

In a catalog only those attributes from an UML class are show where the taggedValue 

showInGrid is true. 

3.7.2 Sorting 

The default sorting of a business object catalog can be influenced by setting the sortPos 

taggedValues for the UML-attributes. If the sortPos is non-zero it will be used to determine 

a sorting sequence. E.g. if you have the attributes: address,counter,firstname, name and 

set the sortpos values as: address(0), counter(-3),firstname(2), name(1) the sorting 

sequence will be name ascending, firstname ascending, count descending. The sorting 

sequence may not be broken or you’ll get a runtime error. The sequence 

address(2),counter(-2), firstname(1) would be false, because the sorting order is unclear in 

this case – should counter or address be the second field to sort by? 

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3.8 Forms 

A form allows for editing the contents of a business object and for calling operations on it. 

Also you can navigate to neighbours of a business object from the form. 

3.8.1 FormSets 

A Formsets helps managing forms and the tables attached to these forms. 

phpbobase-Architecture model 

WF 2004-02-29 

FormSet details 

FormSet 

id : string 

name : string 

issue date : date 

short description : string 

description : memo 

$show() 

$showform() 

dropAllTables() 

createAllTables() 

$addFormSetName() 

$getFormSetNames() 

+myFormSet 

+myForms 

0..1 

0..n 

Form 

id : string 

name : string 


detailType : string 

$lastform : string 

currenttabid : string 

submit() 

getKeyField() 

cancel() 

undo() 

$showForm() 

$addToXmlSearchPath() 

saveForm() 

allStorageFields() 

allReference1Fields() 

myTabs() 

showFormPage() 

showFieldList() 

genScript() 

show() 

getFieldByName() 

allSortFields() 

execrequest() 

dosubmit() 

3.8.2 Fields 

Fields are generated from attributes - for each UML attribute of a class a corresponding 

input field is generated. According to the datatype of the attribute the field type is 

determined: 

datatype 

fieldtype 

boolean 

checkbox 

enum/list/dynamic list several checkboxes or one list depending on the number 

of entries and the setting of checkboxdisplaylimit 

memo 

textarea 

password 

password 

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html 

editize applet 

string and other 

input field 

Fields may have the attribute "mandatory". This field attribute is initially derived from the 

tagged value "mandatory" of the UML attribute. In may be modified at run-time. 

If a field's attribute mandatory is set to true the field's background will be displayed in the 

way defined by your Stylesheet file. 

3.9 Selection Catalogs 

See Requirement #004 

phpbobase Architecture model 

WF 2004-02-13 

Selection Catalog 

Selection_catalog 

name : string 

language : string 


catalogtype : enum{isEnumeration,isList,isDynamicList} 

+myCatalog 

1 

+myEntries 

0..n 

CatalogEntry 

dbkey : string 

identifier : string 

entry : string 


code : long 

usagecount : long 

There a three ways to define a list of possible values that may be entered for a field: 

Enumerations (isEnumeration) 

Lists (isList) 

Dynamic Lists (isDynamicList) 

Enumerations are fixed sets of values that are mainly defined in the UML model using the 

CORBA enum datatype concept. 

Lists are sets of values that may be modified by an administrator 

Dynamic Lists are sets of values that may be modified by an end-user 

If you are using Lists or Dynamic Lists please set the tagged values “catalog” and 

“catalogtype” of the corresponding attribute (see 3.2.2). 

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3.10 Dynamic Form handling 

3.10.1 Generated Forms 

The Form and field definitions are generated from the UML model. The formset that these 

forms belong to is specified by setting the formsetid when starting the generator. In the 

application wizard you’ll find the formsetid field in the “details” page. The default is set to 

the packagename of the main package of your uml file. 

3.10.2 Dynamic User defined Forms (no UML) 

You may add your own user defined formsets, forms and fields. 

3.11 SQL Database Support (Object-Relational mapping) 

3.11.1 Summary 

UML2PHP transforms your UML models to database structures automatically. For each 

business object a database table is created and for each attribute of a business object a 

database column is created. The transformation decision is based on the “persistent” 

tagged value of the corresponding UML element. If persistent is set to “true” the 

transformation takes place. 

3.11.2 Database 

Database 

(from phpbobase) 

name : string 

$me : Database 

lastmessage : string 

isopen : boolean 

opendb() 

check() 

sql() 

backup() 

restore() 

init() 

mysqlCommand() 

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3.11.3 DBTable 

DBTable 


name : string 

createCommand() 

createOnDB() 

checkTable() 

drop() 

init() 

insertValues() 

updateValues() 

deleteRecord() 

createViewCommand() 

getByKey() 

exists() 

getCount() 

backup() 

restore() 

3.11.4 Persistence Cycle detection 

When modelling classes and their relations be careful to avoid “persistence cycles “. A 

persistence cycle is created if an instance of a class will attempt to store it’s neighbours 

which will in turn store their neighbours – if the chain of these attempts leads to trying to 

store the initial instance again a persistence cycle happens. This is currently not detected 

at run time but at generation time / design time. Here are two examples for persistence 

cycles: 

A 

(from p) 

+myA 

+myB 

B 

(from p) 

+myA 

+myC 

+myB 

+myC 

C 

(from p) 

1:1 persistence cycle example 

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If the navigable roles myB from A to B, myC from B to C and myA from C to A are all 

marked persistent than a persistence cycle is created. 

Menu 


0..n 

+mySubMenus 

1 

+myParentMenu 

1:N to self persistence cycle example 

If myParentMenu is marked as persistent the Menu will attempt to store itself as a 

neighbour . To avoid this persistence cycle set the “persistent” tag of the myParentMenu 

role to false 

The generator can warn you when a persistence cycle happens: 

You should then cancel the transaction and solve the problem by setting the persistent 

tags in a way that the persistence cycle is broken. 

To switch on the persistence cycle check you might want to check the check box 

of your Application Wizard settings or when using the command 

line set the command line option –checkpersistencecycle=true 

3.12 Test Support / Design for Testability 

3.12.1 Summary 

Certain features in UML2PHP have been created for the purpose of being able to test the 

application better. Depending on the test environment you use you might find some of 

these features useful. These are: 

Javascript Menu disabling 

Debug and log 

3.12.2 Javascript Menu disabling 

The URL Parameter nojavascriptmenu will be set to the value of the attribute 

useJavaScriptMenu of the class WebFrame. 

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If it is set to false, the menu will be displayed using simple HTML links instead of 

JavaScript (if set to true). 

3.12.3 Debug and log 

The bpcommon_Debug is used for Debug support. To init logging initialize it with 

bpcommon_Debug::init(true); 

This mode is automatically entered if a user logs in that has a role with the name 

"Developer" assigned to it. When Debug-loggin is switched on you'll find a debug log 

named "phperrorlog.txt" in your operating systems default temporary directory. The logging 

commands for getter and setter are pre-generated but commented out. If you'd like to see 

the result just uncomment the code. E.g.: 

bpcommon_Debug::log("Getting WebFrame [".$nm."]"); 

3.13 Autoloading of PHP classes 

UML2PHP supports autoloading of your classes. To do so it will create a helper class with 

an index of all the generated PHP classes. The index will allow to look up the PHP name 

for a CORBA IDL name and then the path to the generated PHP class for the PHP name. 

The arrays $_php2path and $_idl2path are internally used by the helper class for this 

purpose. 

Example helper Class “Jokedatabase_ClassList”: 

class Jokedatabase_ClassList { 

static function getClassPathList() { 

// help autoload ... require_once ... 

// all classes used 

$_php2path=array(); 

$_idl2php =array(); 

$_php2path["JD01_Author"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classAuthor.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::Author"]="JD01_Author"; 

$_php2path["JD01_AuthorManager"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classAuthorManager.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::AuthorManager"]="JD01_AuthorManager"; 

$_php2path["JD01_AuthorForm"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classAuthorForm.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::AuthorForm"]="JD01_AuthorForm"; 

$_php2path["JD01_AuthorCatalog"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classAuthorCatalog.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::AuthorCatalog"]="JD01_AuthorCatalog"; 

$_php2path["JD01_Joke"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classJoke.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::Joke"]="JD01_Joke"; 

$_php2path["JD01_JokeManager"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classJokeManager.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::JokeManager"]="JD01_JokeManager"; 

$_php2path["JD01_JokeForm"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classJokeForm.php"; 

$_idl2php ["::uml2phpexamples::Jokedatabase::JokeForm"]="JD01_JokeForm"; 

$_php2path["JD01_JokeCatalog"]="uml2phpexamples/Jokedatabase/classJokeCatalog.php"; 

3.14 W3C conforming HTML code support and pretty printing 

Internally UML2PHP tries to be as W3C conforming as possible. The functions 

prepare() and emit() are used for pretty printing the HTML code that is created by 

UML2PHP. 

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3.15 Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) support 

There is a cascading style sheet “formstyle.css” which allows you to set the appearance 

of your application. You may set up your own stylesheet to always use. Just copy the 

content of the BITPlan/UML2PHP/templates directory to a directory of your choice. If you 

know set the template path in the application wizard to this newly created directory with 

your own content the generator will take the formstyle.css file from there. 

3.16 N:M relation support 

An n:m-relation (e.g. between several UserRoles and several MenuItems) should look like 

this to be generated by UML2PHP, the association name “TestMenuAccess” must either 

be the same as the name of the AssociationClass or be empty: 

UML2PHP automatically interprets such a model as if it where modelled like this: 

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In fact the N:M association is split into two 1:N relations to be handled by the database and 

GUI concepts properly. The Jokedatabase example in the tutorial has an N:M relation 

between “Joke” and “Category” as an example for this concept. 

3.17 Platform independent code generation 

To make the UML model platform independent and allow the possibility of generating for 

other target platforms the data types in your model have to be independent of your target 

language PHP. UML2PHP therefore expects CORBA-Types. The basic CORBA-types are 

short, long, long long, unsigned short, unsigned long, unsigned long long, float, double, 

char, wchar, boolean, string and fixed. 

For further information please see the CORBA standard at http://www.omg.org. 

Additionally the following “standard” types are supported: 

date is used for calendar dates. It’s representation in memory and for the database 

is in ISO format yyyy-mm-dd 

memo can be used for long text fields. It represents a string of unlimited length and 

the corresponding database and gui representations are used 

html can be used for text fields in html format. This way you can actually keep 

HTML code in your database. The representation in the gui is done with an 

editize 16 applet. 

 

password can be used for text fields that should be hidden while you enter them. It 

represents a string and the gui representation is as a password field. 

In Gentleware’s Poseidon Professional edition, it is possible to activate the CORBA data 

types by activating the CorbaProfile in the settings dialog. 

In the community edition, it is necessary to create the CORBA DataTypes yourself with 

“New datatype”. Please be sure not to use the java-types like “String”. 

16 the editize applet is delivered with UML2PHP – the license is limited to your local host. If 

you’d like to use the HTML feature you might want to buy an editize license. 

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Inheritance support 

4 Inheritance support 

4.1 What is inheritance? 

Inheritance is a fundamental object oriented concept. When analyzing the desired 

behaviour of a software system, the objects that the system is supposed to handle and 

support are classified. Objects with similar attributes, behaviour and relations lead to 

classes. If objects share common attributes. behaviour and relations but have further 

different attributes, behaviour and relations this will lead to a hierarchy of classes that have 

a generalization/specialization relation to each other – this relation is called inheritance. 

The more general class is called superclass and the specialized class is called subclass. 

The objects of the subclass inherit attributes (features) and operations (behaviour) from 

the superclass. One superclass can always have multiple subclasses. A situation where a 

subclass can have multiple superclasses is called multiple inheritance. Multiple inheritance 

is often avoided and not supported directly in most implementation environments 

(programming languages, database mappings). The feature of the objects that decides to 

which class an object belongs given different possible subclasses the object could belong 

to is called a discriminator. 

4.1.1 Polymorphism 

Polymorphism is complicated word with greek roots – it means something like “many 

varying looks”. In object orientation it is allowed that the attributes, behaviour (and we 

wished easily also relations) with the same name can have different 

realizations/implementations depending on where an object is located in the class 

hierarchy. In the banking example below you’ll see that the getAreaCode() function of a 

foreign customer works differently than that of a domestic customer. 

4.2 Examples 

4.2.1 Banking inheritance example 

The following example is a banking scenario which illustrates the inheritance concept. The 

root subclass of the inheritance hierarchy (also called inheritance tree) in this example is 

Partner. All business contacts that a bank has are considered to be partners. A common 

attribute all these partner objects share is “phone”. The discriminator for the subclasses 

Supplier and Customer is the role / business relation the partner has to the bank. A third 

possible subclass could be “employee”. 

A customer in the desired software system shall have a different behaviour than a supplier. 

A customer shall have one or more bank accounts assigned to him and the usual banking 

services like risk and overdraw limit calculation shall be available. 

The functions getAreaCode() and handle() are polymorph. To calculate the area code for a 

foreign customer (represented by an object that belongs to the class ForeignCustomer) the 

extra attribute Country Code is necessary. E.g. for a german customer the full are code 

might consist of the country code “+49” and the local are code “211” giving “+49 211” as 

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the result. For a domestic customer that would be represented by an object that belongs to 

the class Customer, the area code might be e.g. “719” and so “719” would be returned as 

the result by getAreaCode(). 

handle() is just a helper function that allows to do some task on all partners of the bank. 

The handling will be different for all the objects in the subclasses of the inheritance 

hierarchy. 

The keywords “abstract”, “virtual” and “override” are used as stereotypes for polymorph 

functions in this UML model. This is a work-around for the missing native support of UML 

for these concept, that are known e.g. in the C++ and/or Delphi programming language. 

Using these keywords allows a language specific generator to react accordingly. In 

UML2PHP these keywords are currently ignored. 

Testmodel for inheritance 

08.10.1999 10:40 AV 

2004-06-12 WF english version 

Partner 

phone : string 

getAreaCode() 

handle() 

+myPartners 

0..n 

+myBank 

1..1 

Bank 

maxAccountNumber : long 

$isCustomer(in pPartner : Partner) : boolean 

toCustomer(in pPartner : Customer) 

1..1 

+myBank 

Supplier 

Customer 

calculateOverdrawLimit() 

calculateRisk() 

$calculateTransactionVolumeOfAllCustomers() 

handle() 

handle() 

+myOwner 

0..n 

Bankrelation 

0..n 

+myAccounts 

Bankrelation 

+myAccounts 

0..n 

Account 

overdrawLimit : Amount 

frozen : boolean 

accountNumber : AccountNoType 

interestRate : InterestRate 

calculateNumberOfTransactions() 

getNumberOfTransactions() 

createTransaction() 

calcMax() 

ForeignCustomer 

CountryCode : string 

getAreaCode() : string 

BusinessCustomer 

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4.2.2 Inheritance tree – data attributes 

The following class diagram is a view that shows the relevant data attributes for the object 

relational mapping of the banking example. Please note that the types used for the 

attributes are CORBA types plus a special type “Date” that will be directly mapped to the 

“date” type supplied by most relational databases. 

Testmodel for inheritance 

08.10.1999 10:40 AV 

2004-06-12 WF english version 

2005-07-26 WF ORM version 

Partner 

phone : string 

Customer 

birthdate : Date 

customername : string 

Supplier 

since : Date 

ForeignCustomer 

CountryCode : string 

4.2.3 UML2PHP architecture example (Center) 

The following example shows how a domain specific class (in this example Center) is 

based on an architectural inheritance hierarchy. The root subclass of the hierarchy is BO 

(short for Business Object). The BO base class is used for tracing administrative 

information on business objects, like when and by whom they were created, what the 

name of the key attribute of the business object is, in which table it is stored, whether the 

business object is locked and the like. 

One of the UML2PHP framework classes is Organization, like most UML2PHP framework 

classes it is a subclass of BO. One can also say that Organization is derived from BO. The 

Organization information is used for grouping users, being able to address and label them 

correctly and assign SSL certificate information to them. 

One of the reference projects of UML2PHP is used in a clinical environment. The clinics 

are called Center in the application. For that software system the analysis lead to creating 

the class Center as a subclass of Organization. The only difference between the generic 

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Organization and the specific Center is that the Centers have a collection of patients 

assigned to them. Therefore there is a relation between Center and Patient (which is not 

shown in the class diagram below). 

WF 2004-05-27 

Center 

Center 

Organization 


id : string 

name : string 

unit : string 

address : memo 

countrycode : string 

state : string 

city : string 

web : string 

status : string 

BO 


oid : string 

created_at : date 

created_by : string 

last_modified_at : date 

last_modified_by : string 

boclass : string 

boshortname : string 

bokey : string 

bodbtable : string 

isNew : boolean 

fullyActivated : boolean 

useoidforSession : boolean 

boIsEditing : boolean 

locked_by : string 

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UML2PHP architectural Support for inheritance 

5 UML2PHP architectural Support for inheritance 

5.1 Overview 

There are four areas in which inheritance needs to be supported by UML2PHP: 

UML to PHP/PHP5 language mapping for inheritance 

UML to generic architecture mapping (differenciation between class/static and 

instance specific UML attributes and operations) 

Object relational mapping / mapping UML inheritance to the database structure 

Mapping the UML inheritance to the GUI representation / Forms 

5.2 UML to PHP language mapping for inheritance 

Single inheritance is directly supported by PHP5. Currently UML2PHP supports 

inheritance between classes (implements relations to interfaces are not supported yet). 

The “extends” keyword of PHP is used to denote the inheritance relation between two 

classes. Multiple inheritance is not supported at this time. 

For the above Center class (from the package genepi) the following declaration is 

generated: 

class genepi_Center extends phpbobase_Organization 

{ 

… 

} // genepi_Center 

The superclass Organization from the package phpbobase has the following declaration: 

class phpbobase_Organization extends phpbobase_BO 

{ 

… 

} // phpbobase_Organization 

The root base class BO from the package phpbobase has the following declaration: 

class phpbobase_BO 

{ 

… 

} // phpbobase_BO 

5.3 UML to generic architecture mapping 

UML2PHP always separates class and instance attributes and operations. Each UML 

class that has the tagged Value “hasBOManager” set to “true” will be mapped to two PHP 

classes, one for the instance part which has the prefix “class” and no suffix and one for the 

class/static part with the prefix “class” and the suffix “Manager”. For the Center example 

the PHP files classCenter.php and classCenterManager.php are therefore generated. The 

root base class of the Manager class hierarchy is the UML2PHP framework class 

BOManager. The BOManager is in charge of managing all instances of a class. Creating, 

and deleting (factory), looking up and searching (query) as well as navigating all the 

instances/objects of a class (collection) are the main tasks of a BOManager. 

For the above Center class (from the package genepi) the following declaration is 

generated for the CenterManager: 

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class genepi_CenterManager extends phpbobase_OrganizationManager 

{ 

… 

} // genepi_CenterManager 

The superclass OrganizationManager from the package phpbobase has the following 

declaration: 

class phpbobase_OrganizationManager extends phpbobase_BOManager 

{ 

… 

} // phpbobase_OrganizationManager 

The super class BOManager from the package phpbobase has the following declaration: 

abstract class phpbobase_BOManager extends phpbobase_BOCollection 

{ 

… 

} // phpbobase_BOManager 

As you can see on the architectural side the hierarchy does not end with BOManager – it 

is itself derived from BOCollection. Also it’s an abstract class. There can be no concrete 

BOManager for abstract BO objects. Both the concrete Manager e.g. FooManager 

as the concrete e.g. Foo must be derived. 

5.4 Object relational mapping / mapping UML inheritance to the 

database structure 

5.4.1 Why Object Relational Mapping? 

Writing a PHP application that stores data in a Relational Database Management System 

can be as simple as accessing a few mySql tables and columns directly using the built-in 

API functions of PHP. This simple approach has the disadvantage of taking much effort to 

maintain – any change in the structure of your data must be manually adapted to by 

changing your database access code. The benefit of an object relational mapping lies in 

the encapsulation and the link to the UML model. To gain these benefits a proper objectrelational 

mapping is needed with a strategy for mapping the UML object model to the 

relational table model in order for PHP objects to become stored to the RDBMS/SQL 

database. An object that automatically stores and retrieves itself from storage in this way 

is called “persistent”. 

Objects can not be directly stored and retrieved in a relational database. Object do not 

only consist of data(attributes) but also have an identity a state and behaviour(functions). 

The database will only be able to save the attributes and with some extra measures 

identity and state of the object. There are few problems to solve for this: the data types 

used must be mapped (this is why UML2PHP relies on CORBA data types in the UML 

Model). Also the references from one object to another must be cared for. During PHP 

runtime the object references are direct references between objects in memory. Tables in 

relational databases are linked to each other using foreign and primary keys. There is no 

direct support for inheritance in relational database systems. The design goals for object 

oriented software systems and relational database management systems differ: the object 

oriented approach to software development tries to closely model the business objects and 

business processes the software is to support – relational modeling is much more 

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concerned with normalizing data (avoiding redundant data). The differences between 

these two approaches must be overcome. 

5.4.2 Mapping an inheritance tree 

There are three commonly used approaches for mapping a class inheritance tree to 

relational database tables 17 : 

vertical 

horizontal 

filtered 

The three approaches will be explained now using the Center/Organization/BO inheritance 

tree already used as an example above. 

Vertical Mapping. In vertical mapping, each class in the tree, whether abstract or 

concrete, is mapped to a different table. All branch and leaf tables in the tree must be 

linked to their parent tables. This can be accomplished by means of a foreign key column 

that references the object id (as a key/primary key) of the parent table. In order to 

instantiate a concrete class using this method, a join query of the concrete class table and 

all its abstract parent class tables must be performed. The tables below show how our two 

sample models are mapped to a relational database (in this case mySQL) using vertical 

mapping: 

GC1_Center 

colname coltype collen colflags comment 

oid string 32 not_null 

GV1_Organization 



id string 255 not_null primary_key 

name string 255 

unit string 255 

address blob 65535 blob 

countrycode string 32 

state string 255 

city string 255 

web string 255 

status string 255 

mainContact_id string 255 

17 The mapping definitions are from 

http://www.objectmatter.com/vbsf/docs/maptool/ormapping.html. 

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GV1_BO 


oid string 32 not_null primary_key 

created_at date 10 

created_by string 255 

last_modified_at date 10 

last_modified_by string 255 

boclass string 255 

boshortname string 255 

bokey string 255 

bodbtable string 255 

locked_by string 255 

The CENTER, ORGANIZATION and BO tables are related to each other via the OID column. In 

this way, restoring a CENTER object with OID=100 requires a join of the tables CENTER, 

ORGANIZATION and BO: 

SELECT CENTER.*, ORGANIZATION.*, BO.* 

FROM CENTER c, ORGANIZATION o, BO b 

WHERE c.oid=oid AND o.oid=bo.oid AND oid=100; 

This approach closely resembles the class inheritance tree in the database, but might 

result in complex and time consuming queries on moderately deep inheritance hierarchies. 

Nevertheless this is the standard mapping approach that UML2PHP uses. 

Horizontal Mapping. Under horizontal mapping, each concrete class in the tree is 

mapped to a different table. Each of these mapped tables contains columns for all 

attributes in its concrete class, plus all attributes inherited from all its abstract parent 

classes. In other words, abstract classes are not mapped to their own table. This approach 

provides very fast performance, and is simple to design. However, if an attribute of an 

abstract parent class is changed, then potentially many tables must be modified. 

Consequently, this method is most useful if the inheritance tree is more method driven 

than attribute driven. To be more specific, if a substantial number of classes inherit a large 

number of attributes from an abstract parent class, then the vertical or filtered methods 

might be better choices. 

As shown in the table below, the number of tables necessary to map our sample model to 

a mySQL database using horizontal mapping is reduced to two. Retrieving a center or 

organization in this case involves querying only its corresponding table. 

GC1_Center 






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GC1_Center 






































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With horizontal mapping it gets harder to navigate all the objects of the root and 

superclasses of the inheritance tree. This is one of the reasons, why this mapping 

approach is not yet supported by UML2PHP. 

Filtered Mapping. In filtered mapping all concrete classes in the tree are mapped to the 

same table. The table must contain columns for all attributes of all the abstract and 

concrete classes in the inheritance tree (or the part of the tree using this mapping). In 

addition, a filter column is created in the table. The value of the filter column is used to 

distinguish between subclasses. Abstract classes are not mapped to this table. This 

approach provides adequate performance, but violates table-normalization rules. More 

specifically, it could lead to a substantial number of NULL columns in the table, wasting 

space. Consequently, this method is most useful if most of the attributes are inherited from 

the abstract parent classes. As shown in the table below, only one table is necessary to 

map our sample model to a mySQL database using filtered mapping. 

GV1_BO 






















The boclass column is used as a filter used to distinguish the type of object being stored. 

For example, assuming that a boclass=”GV1_Organization” is used for organizations, then 

to retrieve all organizations from the GV1_BO table we can issue the following query: 

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SELECT o.oid, o.id,o.name, o.unit, o.address, o.countrycode, o.state, o.city, o.web, o.status 

FROM GV1_BO o WHERE boclass=’GV1_Organization’; 

The problem is that all column names that are derived from the organization attribute 

names need to be known to create this query. UML2PHP does not support filtered 

mapping. 

5.5 Mapping the UML inheritance to the GUI representation / Forms 

!!! Currently no special mapping is done. It’s intended to have the subclasses information 

on separate pages. You are invited to put feature requests on SourceForge for this 

feature. 

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6 Generator 

The Generator of UML2PHP is based on the smartGENERATOR technology by BITPlan. 

Fully detailled manuals and API information on smartGENERATOR is available with the 

Enterprise Version of UML2PHP. This reference manual is focussed on the visible parts of 

smartGENERATOR that you might need to interact with while using UML2PHP: 

Application Wizard 

Commandline Version of Generators 

Generator Transaction Dialog 

Error Handling and Exception Stack 

6.1 Application Wizard 

The application wizard is described in the tutorial for UML2PHP 

6.2 Commandline Version of Generators 

The Generators for UML2PHP are delivered as jar files. You’ll find the four jar files: 

phpbobase.jar 

The full fledged business object generator that generators your PHP code for 

supporting business object based application 

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Generator 

phpgen (now also in phpbobase.jar) 

The PHP5 language generator – this generator is for creating PHP5 code from UML 

models (without special handling for business objects) 

uml2php.jar 

This is the jar file that contains the application wizar 

smartGenerator.jar 

This is where the underlying smartGENERATOR technology is packaged into 

in the bin directory of your installation. 

6.2.1 General usage on the commandline 

Calling one of the generators from the commandline is done by one of the commands 

java -cp phpbobase.jar com.bitplan.phpgen.gen.phpgen 

or 

java –jar phpbobase.jar 

or 

java –jar uml2php.jar 

The first two calls will respond with a usage display. The third call will start the Application 

Wizard which was describe above. 

Here is an example for a usage display: 

BITPlan smartGENERATOR Version 4.0 

missing argument modelFilename 

usage: java com.bitplan.phpbobase.gen.phpbobase 

{the path of the model file} 

[] {the root directory for all output} 

-indexdir= {the output directory for generated index 

files} 

[-phpver=(5)] {the php version (3, 4 or 5)} 

[-checkpersistencecycle] {check persistence cycle} 

[-temproot=] {path to temporary directory for generation} 

[-removetemp] {set if temporary results shall be removed 

automatically} 

[-showtransaction] {set if a gui for the transaction shall be shown} 

[-automodify] {true if modifications shall be done without asking} 

[-allowPurposeRename] {true if usercode purpose is renameable} 

[-debug=(core)] {the debug mode once/core/all/off} 

[-log=] {the path of the logfile} 

[-edit] {set to invoke interactive editing of arguments} 

[-console] {if set a console window is opened} 

[-wait] 

{set if to wait for Console to be closed by user - needs -console 

to work} 

[-maxerrlevel=(0)] {maximum errorlevel to be 

tolerated} 

[-maxerrcount=(0)] {how many errors shall be 

tolerated} 

[-minMbyte=(0)] {how much discspace mandatory to 

continue} 

[-outputChangeListener= 

 

(com.bitplan.gen.output.impl.OutputChangeHandlerImpl)] 

{class to invoke on outputchanges} 

[-beforeModification=(cvs edit)] 

{command before Modification} 

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[-afterModification=] {command after 

Modification} 

[-modlistpath=] 

{set this path to create a list of all modified files} 

[-gencls=] {list of classes to generate} 

[-backupdir=] {the directory to use for continue with 

backup} 

[-cmdln] {operation in command line only modus} 

[-javadoc] {set if package javadoc shall be created} 

[-exceptionpackage=] {default exception package} 

[-baseexception=] {standard exception for operations} 

[-gencls=] {Classlist to generate} 

[-ini=] {the path of the property file} 

The details of most options are described in the manual of the Enterprise Version of 

UML2PHP. For basic usage in the community and professional edition the following 

options are relevant: 

{the path of the model file} 

The model file may be of any type that is supported by the smartGENERATOR 

technology: e.g. XMI export files from various tools, or Poseidon zuml files. 

] {the root directory for all output} 

 

The path to the root of the source tree to be generated 

-indexdir= {the output directory for generated index files} 

This is the relative path of the directory where the index file for class-autoloading 

support is generated to. 

[-phpver=(5)] {the php version (4 or 5)} 

There is only limited PHP4 code capability available and this is an unsupported 

feature, therefore the default is: 5 

 

[-checkpersistencecycle] {check persistence cycle} 

if true a persistence cycle check on the model will be performed and an exception is 

thrown if a cycle is detected (only for phpbobase.jar) 

6.2.2 Language only generator 

This generator basically only needs the model and the outputdirectory as input. It will 

generate PHP5 code for you. 

Here is an example of a valid call: 

java –cp bin\phpbobase.jar com.bitplan.phpgen.gen.phpgen 

php\uml2phpexamples\recipeCollection\model\recipecollection.zuml c:\temp\test\ -indexdir=. 

In principle it’s possible to call the phpbobase.jar Generator in the same way. But you then 

might want to also call the xml – Generator for the forms. An example Batch file would be: 

REM fill in or change as needed 

SET BPPATH=C:\PROGRA~1\BITPlan\UML2PHP 

set UMLDir= 

set UMLNAME= 

set UMLEXT=zuml 

set OutDir= 

set IndexDir= 

set FormDir= 

set ReportDir=.\ 

set FormSetName= 

set FormSetId= 

REM keep this as is 

SET BPCLASSPATH=%BPPATH%\bin\uml2php.jar;%BPPATH%\bin\phpbobase.jar;%BPPATH%\bin 

\phpgen.jar;%BPPATH%\bin\testutil.jar;%BPPATH%\bin\smartGenerator.jar;%CLASSPATH 

% 

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set UMLFile=%UMLDir%%UMLNAME%.%UMLEXT% 

REM gen content 

java com.bitplan.phpbobase.gen.phpbobase %UMLFile% %OutDir% -indexdir=%IndexDir% %1 %2 %3 %4 

java com.bitplan.phpbobase.gen.xml %UMLFile% %FormDir% -protocolid=%FormSetId% - 

protocolname=%FormSetName% 

6.3 Generator Transaction Dialog 

The generator transaction dialog appears if the principle of the generator “generate 

everything or nothing” fails. To follow this principle all generator results are first stored in a 

subdirectory “gen” of the temporary directory of your operating system. If the generator 

fails, due to an error in the input model, the generator itself, a full disk or any other 

circumstance that can be caught by the generator a generator transaction dialog will 

appear. This will also happen if everything is fine, but the files in the temporary directory 

will probably not be successfully copied to their finally destination since the destination 

files are readonly. 

The generator transaction dialog has 9 buttons: 

continue with backup - even if an error occurred – ignore it and do not even create 

a backup of the files involved 

continue with backup - even if an error occurred – ignore it but create a backup zip 

file of all the files involved before overwriting these files 

cancelTransaction – stop the transaction – do not overwrite any of the files that 

where to be generated 

showProblemsOnly – show a list of those files that caused problems 

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leftOverUserCode – if applicable shows a list of files that have a “left over user 

code” problem 

modifiedOutputsList - show a list of all files that would be modified when continuing 

the transaction 

myConsole – if applicable shows the console (that is the graphical output for stderr 

and stdout if it has been redirected) 

mySettingManager – show the settings for this generator 

myTargetDirectoriesList – show a list of all directories that are target directories for 

this generator run/transaction 

6.4 Error Handling 

In case an error should occur during the generation process the error might be handled in 

two ways: 

if a general error occurs and ExceptionStack is immediately displayed 

if the error occurs in the context of one of the files generated, but all other files 

could be generated successfully the exception is caught and you can navigate to 

the corresponding ExceptionStack thru the “showProblemsOnly” button of the 

generator transaction dialog 

6.4.1 ExceptionStack 

The field “Message” shows the original error message. The field “hint” might contain 

(sometimes a collection of) helpful information on what to do to solve the problem. 

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The ExceptionStack shows six different options: 

Ok – just continue with no action 

Cancel – stop the operation (if enabled – might even lead to a system exit – be 

careful to use this button) 

Report_EMail – report this problem to the vendor of the software (BITPlan) 

ShowDetail (show the details of this problem – a full history is displayed) 

StackTrace – show the Java stack trace to check the cause of the problem 

myContext – show the object which was the context for the problem (either using 

it’s own gui or by showing it’s properties depending on the type of object) 

6.4.2 Batch mode 

There is a command line parameter “-batch” now for the application wizard. If you this the 

Generators will automatically be started – but be cautious – no questions will be asked 

when overriding e.g. left over user code – it’s like clicking “continue withoutbackup” all the 

time. 

6.4.3 System.property expansion 

You can use a notation like ${uml2php_home} in you application Wizard configuration files 

to specify the outputdirectory, the model path or the template directory. You might want to 

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make sure that a valid Java system property is used or supplied by changing the java call 

of the generator with a –D option. 

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Appendix 

7 Appendix 

7.1 Abbreviations 

Abbreviation Explanation Comment/URL/Reference 

BO 

Business Object 

CORBA 

Common Object Request http://www.omg.org 

Broker Architecture 

CSS Cascading Style Sheet http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ 

DB 

Database 

GUI 


IDL Interface Definition Language See CORBA Standard Chapter 

2.4 

LAMP 

Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP 

MDA Model Driven Architecture http://www.omg.org/mda/ 

PHP … Hypertext Preprocessor http://www.php.net 

PHP5 Version 5 of PHP http://www.php.net 

SSL Secure Socket Layer http://wp.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/ 

SQL Structured Query Language International Organization for 

Standardization, Information 

Technology — Database 

Languages — SQL, ISO/IEC 

9075, 1992. 

UML Unified Modelling Language http://www.uml.org 

URL Uniform Resource Locator ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/innotes/rfc1738.txt 

WAMP 

Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP 

W3C World Wide Web Consortium www.w3c.org 

7.2 Bibliography 

7.2.1 Recommended Literature 

 

Build your own database driven website using PHP&MySQL, Sitepoint Pty Ltd, 

Australia, ISBN 0-9579218-0-2 

German translation: Kevin Yank, PHP und MySQL Schritt für Schritt zur 

datenbankgestützten Website, 2003 dpunkt.verlag, ISBN 3-89864-198-8 

 

Harry Fuecks „The PHP Anthology“ ISBN-0-9579218-5-3, 2004 Sitepoint Pty Ltd, 

Australia 

German translation: “PHP5 für Fortgeschrittene”, 2005 dpunkt.verlag, ISBN 3- 

89864-300-X 

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Appendix 

Sebastian Bergmann: "Professionelle Softwareentwicklung mit PHP 5" 

Objektorientierung. Entwurfsmuster. Modellierung. Fortgeschrittene 

Datenbankprogrammierung. 

dpunkt.verlag 2005. ISBN 3-89864-229-1. 

http://www.professionelle-softwareentwicklung-mit-php5.de/ 

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3898642291/sbergmann 

7.3 Web-Links 

7.3.1 Product-Manufacturers 

Category Product name Manufacturer URL 

PHP Development Zend Studio Zend http://www.zend.com 

Environment 

UML Tool Poseidon Gentleware http://www.uml.org 

7.3.2 Standards 

Standard Publisher URL 

CORBA OMG http://www.omg.org 

UML OMG http://www.uml.org 

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Index 

8 Index 

A 

Abstraction 12 

Apache 5 

Attribute 13, 17 

autogenerate 16 

autoKey 17 

B 

BO 9, 52 

bootmode 24, 25 

bpcommon_Debug 31 

byReference 22 

C 

catalog 17 

catalogtype 18 

certificateFunction 23 

cgi-bin 22 

charWidth 19 

checkBoxDisplayLimit 23 

Class 12, 15, 16 

config.inc 22 

confirm 20 

CORBA 8, 14, 33, 52 

CSS 12, 32 

D 

Database 28 

database connection 23 

datatype 8, 26 

DataType 12, 15 

DB 9, 52 

dbmachine 23 

dbname 23 

dbpassword 23 

dbsqltype 23 

DBTable 29 

dbuser 23 

debug 23 

Debug 31 

default 22 

derivedfrom 18 

do not generate 15 

Documentation 12, 13 

downloadDirectory 23 

Dynamic List 27 

E 

Enumeration 27 

ExceptionStack 49 

Export-Directory 15 

F 

final 16, 17, 19 

Form 9 

FunctionCall 8 

G 

GUI 9, 10, 52 

H 

hasBOManager 21, 22 

I 

icon 20, 21 

IDL 8, 52 

Inheritance 12 

In-Parameter 12 

Interface 15 

isDefaultSearchField 18 

isGUI 16, 20, 21 

isKey 17 

isMandatory 18 

isSaveable 17 

L 

label 18 

LAMP 52 

List 27 

M 

MDA 6, 52 

Model 15 

Multiplicity 13 

MySQL 5 

N 

N:M 12 

Namespace 12 

Navigation 13 

nojavascriptmenu 30 

Null Value 11 

NULL_VALUE_DISPLAY 

11 

O 

Operation 12 

ORB 8 

Organization 24 

Out-Parameter 13 

P 

Package 12, 16 

packageName 22 

Parameter 12 

PEAR 5 

persistent 30 

PHP 9, 52 

PHP5 5 see PHP 

phpbobase 23 

Poseidon 5 

R 

RegExp 19 

Relation 13 

Return-Value 13 

Role 13 

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Index 

S 

Secure Socket Layer See 

SSL 

selectAction 19 

selectDesc 19 

showInGrid 18, 25 

smartGENERATOR 5, 45 

sortPos 17, 25 

SQL 52 

SQLView 16 

SSL 24, 52 

stereotype 15 

SystemConfiguration: 23 

T 

Table 9 

Tagged Value 12 

Template 16 

TemplateOptions 16 

timeoutSecs 23 

ToolName 15 

toolTipText 16, 19, 20, 21 

transient 21 

U 

UML 5, 14, 52 

UML2PHP 5 

Unified Modelling 

Language See UML 

unit 18 

URL Parameter 30 

User 9, 24 

UserRole 24 

V 

Visibility 13 

W 

W3C 12, 31 

WAMP 52 

X 

XMIBaseId 16 

XMIId 16, 19, 20, 21 

XMLasNode 19 

XMLderived 17, 19 

XMLtransient 17, 19 

Y 

Y-Principle 6 

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