Introduction

Database

The DataHandler is the class that handles all data writing to database tables configured in TCA. In addition the class handles commands such as copy, move, delete. It will handle undo/history and versioning of records and everything will be logged to the sys_log table. It will make sure that write permissions are evaluated correctly for the user trying to write to the database. Generally, any processing specific option in the $GLOBALS['TCA'] array is handled by DataHandler.

Using DataHandler for manipulation of the database content in the TCA-configured tables guarantees that the data integrity of TYPO3 is respected. This cannot be safely guaranteed, if you write to TCA-configured database tables directly. It will also manage the relations to files and other records.

DataHandler requires a backend login to work. This is due to the fact that permissions are observed (of course) and thus DataHandler needs a backend user to evaluate against. This means you cannot use DataHandler from the frontend scope. Thus writing to tables (such as a guestbook) will have to be done from the frontend without DataHandler.

Files

DataHandler can also handle files. The file operations are normally performed in the File > Filelist module where you can manage a directory on the server by copying, moving, deleting and editing files and directories. The file operations are managed by two Core classes, \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\File\BasicFileUtility and \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\File\ExtendedFileUtility .