Feature: #100071 - Introduce non-magic repository find methods

See forge#100071

Description

Extbase repositories come with a magic __call() method to allow calling the following methods without implementing:

  • findBy[PropertyName]($propertyValue)

  • findOneBy[PropertyName]($propertyValue)

  • countBy[PropertyName]($propertyValue)

Magic methods are quite handy but they have a huge disadvantage. There is no proper IDE support i.e. most IDEs show an error or at least a warning, saying method findByAuthor() does not exist. Also, type declarations are impossible to use because with __call() everything is mixed. And last but not least, static code analysis - like PHPStan - cannot properly analyze those and give meaningful errors.

Therefore, there is a new set of methods without all those downsides:

  • findBy(array $criteria, ...): QueryResultInterface

  • findOneBy(array $criteria, ...): object|null

  • count(array $criteria, ...): int

The naming of those methods follows those of doctrine/orm and only count() differs from the formerly countBy(). While all magic methods only allow for a single comparison (propertyName = propertyValue), those methods allow for multiple comparisons, called constraints.

Example:

$this->blogRepository->findBy(['author' => 1, 'published' => true]);

Impact

The new methods support a broader feature set, support IDEs, static code analyzers and type declarations.