Extends
lithium\core\StaticObjectThe schema is lazy-loaded by the first call to `Model::schema()`, unless it has been manually defined in the `Model` subclass. For schemaless persistent storage (e.g. MongoDB), this is never populated automatically - if you desire a fixed schema to interact with in those cases, you will be required to define it yourself. Example: {{{ protected $_schema = array( '_id' => array('type' => 'id'), // required for Mongo 'name' => array('type' => 'string', 'default' => 'Moe', 'null' => false), 'sign' => array('type' => 'string', 'default' => 'bar', 'null' => false), 'age' => array('type' => 'integer', 'default' => 0, 'null' => false) ); }}} For MongoDB specifically, you can also implement a callback in your database connection configuration that fetches and returns the schema data, as in the following: {{{ // config/bootstrap/connections.php: Connections::add('default', array( 'type' => 'MongoDb', 'host' => 'localhost', 'database' => 'app_name', 'schema' => function($db, $collection, $meta) { $result = $db->connection->schemas->findOne(compact('collection')); return $result ? $result['data'] : array(); } )); }}} This example defines an optional MongoDB convention in which the schema for each individual collection is stored in a "schemas" collection, where each document contains the name of a collection, along with a `'data'` key, which contains the schema for that collection, in the format specified above. When defining `'$_schema'` where the data source is MongoDB, the types map to database types as follows: {{{ id => MongoId date => MongoDate regex => MongoRegex integer => integer float => float boolean => boolean code => MongoCode binary => MongoBinData }}}