Joomla! RAD Layer (FOF) updated to version 2.2.0

Joomla! tracker item 33440: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=33440

Overview

A major new feature is included. An ORM-like interface to accessing table relationships in FOFTable with a matching iterator to step through a Model's item list loading only one record at a time (using database cursors). This will help developers access records in a one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relations using an architecturally more sound way. It's still not architecturally ideal of course as FOF follows the same convention as Joomla!, breaking its data model between a table and a model class and it's unlikely that will change due to backwards compatibility concerns.

For the complete changelog please consult the FOF changelog.

Backwards compatibility

This PR is fully backwards compatible with the Joomla! RAD Layer (FOF) introduced in Joomla! 3.2.0.

Testing instructions

Time investment: approximately 2 minutes

Apply this patch. Make sure that the "Post-installation messages" component and the Two Factor Authentication feature using Google Authenticator are still in working order.

Acknowledgments and thank you's

This release would have not been possible without the FOF contributors @roland-d @wilsonge @tampe125 @bbloom @jurianeven @peterpeter @Eighke @anibalsanchez @Skullbock @pagchen @willfaulds @zanardigit @dadaxr and everyone who participated in the mailing list discussions. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone.

The author would like to make a special acknowledgment to the Laravel Framework for acting as an inspiration of the relations handling. Also a special thank you to Herman Peeren for infecting me with the bug of looking into ORM more seriously.