Possible to get data back when using Extended Associations?

[ghost]

If I have a many-to-many relationship and I want to store some extra data with the many-to-many relationship (link), I can do:

$x = R::dispense('x');
$x->name = 'test';
R::store($x);

$y = R::dispense('y');
$y->name = 'test';
R::store($y);

R::associate($x, $y, array('leader' => 1));

This results in 3 tables:

x
=======
id
name

y
=======
id
name

x_y
=======
id
x_id
y_id
leader

However, it seems to me that ExtAssociationManager is missing a method (extRelated) to get data from the "base bean" back. For example, given the above, there doesn't seem to be a way to get all the Ys that are related to an X along with the base bean for each link in one neat function.

[ghost]

After thinking about this, how about being able to access the link bean from a bean? I am a huge fan of $x->sharedY; //x and y are beans to retrieve all Ys connected to X.

Maybe we could have $x->sharedLinkY to retrieve an array of links with the array keys set to the ids of the Y beans. We can then easily modify the link record as well:

$links = $x->sharedLinkY;
foreach($links as $link){
 $link->leader =0;
 $link->someOtherProp = "property"
 store($link);
}

Perhaps even make $link->x_id and $link->y_id so that people can't easily damage the relationship.

And if we wish to get the link that connects $x to $y:

$xylink = $x->sharedY[0]->sharedLink;
$link->leader = 0;
$link->anotherPropety = 'sometext';

Saving $x would then cascade and save the modified link as well.

[gabordemooij]

Extended Associations are almost never needed. Just treat the association as an intermediate bean.

list($p1,$p2) = R::dispense('person',2);
$p1->name = 'x';
$p2->name = 'y';
$pair = R::dispense('pair');
$pair->person = $p1;
$pair->other = $p2;
$pair->relation = 'friends';

To retrieve:

$pair = R::load('pair',$id);
$p1 = $pair->person;
$p2 = $pair->fetchAs('person')->other;

I regret I ever added extended associations at all. They are a leftover from RedBeanPHP 1.0 when the Association API was far more important and shared[] and own[] lists didnt exist yet.