How to Create A Schema Based On A DBDesigner Model

If you use DBDesigner 4 to design your model, Propel can take the XML file used by DBDesigner as storage, and convert it to a Propel schema.

Basic Usage

The process is very straightforward. Just copy a DBDesigner model file under the dbd/ subdirectory of your project folder, and call the dbd2propel task:

> cd /path/to/myproject
> mkdir dbd
> cp /path/to/dbdesigner/models/* dbd/
> propel-gen dbd2propel

Propel looks for all dbd/*.xml files, converts them to the Propel XML schema format, and saves the new schemas in the project folder. For instance, if you have a DBDesigner4 model named model.xml under the dbd/ directory, Propel will create a model.schema.xml file out of it.

Once the Propel XML schema is created, you can build the project, as described in the Building A Project chapter.

Customizing The Task

You can customize the task by overriding any of the three following settings in your build.properties:

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
#
#  D B D E S I G N E R   2   P R O P E L   S E T T I N G S
#
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

# Directory where the task looks for DBDesigner model files
propel.dbd2propel.dir = ${propel.project.dir}/dbd
# Pattern for DBDesigner file names
propel.dbd2propel.includes = *.xml
# XSLT used to transform DBDesigner files to Propel schemas
propel.dbd2propel.xsl.file = ${propel.home}/resources/xsl/dbd2propel.xsl