[TYPO3-team-core-v5] RFC: Open question on support for associative array properties in persistence

[Bastian Waidelich]

Karsten Dambekalns wrote:

Hi Karsten,

> Please have a look at
>  http://forge.typo3.org/issues/show/1620

For me it's still a bit unclear how to handle sub-references in TYPO3CR 
in general. I can't really think of a scenario where array-properties in 
domain objects would make sense.. Let's take the Blog for instance:
Right now _posts_ is an array-property of _Blog_ which forces us to load 
all posts into RAM to find a single post by its UUID.
And we have to instantiate a _Blog_ instance to retrieve its _posts_, 
there is no "find all posts of blog xy" AFAIK.
Is there already a plan on how to overcome these issues?

And then - back to the topic - wouldn't _posts_ rather be some kind of 
Collection of F3::Blog::Domain::Post, and the "array key" the identifier?

As you can see, the whole Content Repository subject is still quite 
diffuse to me.
Anyway, when using arrays I'd definitely agree to Robert: If I would 
forget (or didn't know about) some @preservekeys annotation this would 
lead to unexpected results. And worse, it would lead to unexpected 
results only in some cases.
My opinion in general: As little magic (in the sense of new concepts, 
new annotations, unusual behavior) as possible.

Bastian