Adding a database index to a SilverStripe DataObject

Posted by Gav on 26 December 2011 | 1 Comments

Tags: SilverStripe, DataObject, Indexes

If you have large amounts of data, you should be using database indexes. This is how you add a database index to a DataObject in Silverstripe.

There is a static variable called $indexes The way to use it is to pass an array to indexes using array('index name' => 'fields to index')

Here is a quick example.

static $indexes = array(
  'MyIndex' => '(Name)'
);

To index more than 1 field, you can use the following

static $indexes = array(
  'MyIndex' => '(Name,ShortDescription)'
);

To use a unique index as you would on a URLSegment field, you need to pass array('Field name to index' => true) to the $indexes variable.

static $indexes = array(
  'URLSegment' => true
);

Dont forgot to dev/build?flush=1 your database.