[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress Trac] #6358: Query methods should return arrays of BP objects

[buddypress-trac]

#6358: Query methods should return arrays of BP objects
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 Reporter:  boonebgorges  |      Owner:
     Type:  enhancement   |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  API           |    Version:
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
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 We have nice classes for most of our data types - `BP_Groups_Group`,
 `BP_Activity_Activity`, and so on - and when we fetch individual items, we
 usually handle them as objects that instantiate these classes. When
 querying for *multiple* items, though, we basically return the results of
 `$wpdb->get_results()`, which is an array of `stdClass` objects.
 (`BP_Activity_Activity::get()`, etc.)

 It would be better if these query methods returned arrays of BP objects -
 better for internal use (we could start using, you know, actual OOP
 techniques in a reliable way), better for centralizing cache and
 invalidation logic, better for a consistent developer interface, etc.

 The trick is to do this in a way that doesn't require a single database
 query for each object. Here we should take a page from WP, which does the
 following for post queries:
 a. Run a query just to get IDs that match a post query - `SELECT ID FROM
 $wpdb->posts`
 b. Populates the cache for individual post objects
 (`_prime_post_caches()`), using a single query `SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts
 WHERE ID IN (...)`
 c. Populate the results array like this: `foreach ( $ids as $id ) {
 $found[] = get_post( $id ); }`, where `get_post()` (in a roundabout way)
 grabs the post data from the cache and passes it to
 `WP_Post::__construct()`, which in turn populates a new `WP_Post` object
 without requiring another DB query.

 We already do a pretty good job with (a) and (b), at least in bp-activity
 and bp-groups. So it should be a reasonable task to do (c) too. Let's!

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Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6358>
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