DevExtreme PHP Data

Unofficial. This is an independent, community-maintained port. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Developer Express Inc. "DevExtreme" and "DevExpress" are trademarks of Developer Express Inc.

Server-side data processing for DevExtreme widgets in PHP — a port of DevExtreme.AspNet.Data. It understands the request the DevExtreme client sends (filter, sort, group, skip, take, totalSummary, groupSummary, select, ...) and answers in the exact shape the client expects.

• Arrays / iterables / objects — every feature, in memory (ArraySource).
• SQL through PDO — SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL (PdoSource). Filtering, sorting, paging, select, counts and summaries run in the database; collapsed groups use a single GROUP BY.
• Framework agnostic. Requires PHP 8.1+, ext-json, ext-mbstring (+ ext-pdo for SQL).

Install

composer require omerkoseoglu/devextreme-data

Quick start

use DevExtreme\Data\DataSourceLoader;
use DevExtreme\Data\PdoSource;

$source = new PdoSource($pdo, 'orders', primaryKey: ['id']);

header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo json_encode(DataSourceLoader::loadFromRequest($source)); // reads $_GET + $_POST

// client
const store = DevExpress.data.AspNet.createStore({ key: 'id', loadUrl: '/api/orders' });
$('#grid').dxDataGrid({ dataSource: store, remoteOperations: true /* ... */ });

Arrays work the same way:

echo json_encode(DataSourceLoader::load($arrayOfRows, $_GET));

load() accepts raw request parameters (JSON strings or decoded arrays) or a LoadOptions instance, and returns a LoadResult (data, totalCount, groupCount, summary) that is JsonSerializable. Malformed input throws InvalidArgumentException — answer with HTTP 400.

Features

Feature	Array	PDO
Filter: = <> > >= < <=, contains, notcontains, startswith, endswith, nested and/or, ["!", ...]	✔	✔
Sort (multi-key, stable), defaultSort, primaryKey tie-break	✔	✔
Paging, requireTotalCount, isCountQuery	✔	✔
Grouping (multi-level, isExpanded: false → counts only), requireGroupCount	✔	✔
Group intervals: numeric ranges, year quarter month day dayOfWeek hour minute second	✔	✔
Total & group summaries: sum min max avg count	✔	✔
select, preSelect, dotted paths (customer.name)	✔	✔
Custom aggregators (CustomAggregators::register)	✔	✔ (computed in PHP)
Custom filter operations (CustomFilterCompilers::registerBinary)	✔	✔
paginateViaPrimaryKey, remoteSelect, remoteGrouping	–	✔
Objects, getters (getX()/isX()), ArrayAccess, DateTimeInterface, generators	✔	–

LoadOptions

Properties mirror the client option names: requireTotalCount, requireGroupCount, isCountQuery, isSummaryQuery, skip, take, sort, group, filter, totalSummary, groupSummary, select, preSelect, primaryKey, defaultSort, stringToLower, sortByPrimaryKey, paginateViaPrimaryKey, remoteSelect, remoteGrouping. Build it with LoadOptions::fromArray($_GET) or set properties directly.

PdoSource

new PdoSource(
    $pdo,                                   // must use PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
    'orders',                               // table/view, or trusted raw FROM with rawFrom: true
    columns: ['id' => 'o.id', 'customer.name' => 'c.name'], // optional whitelist: field => SQL expression
    primaryKey: ['id'],
    where: 'tenant_id = ?', whereParams: [7], // always applied
    // rawFrom: true + fromParams: [...] lets $from be a sub-select with bound parameters
);

Security. Filter values are always bound parameters. Field names from the client are never interpolated unless they are a key of the columns whitelist or a plain identifier (/^[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*$/). Pass columns in production to expose only the fields you intend. from, where and the columns expressions are your trusted SQL.

Semantics worth knowing

• NULL never satisfies a comparison and is matched by <> — identical in both sources, so ["!", ...] agrees too.
• String case: ArraySource compares case-insensitively by default (stringToLower: true); PdoSource leaves it to the database collation (false). contains/startswith/endswith are case-insensitive: LIKE on SQLite/MySQL (MySQL follows the column collation), ILIKE on PostgreSQL.
• Sorting strings: case-insensitive in memory, collation-defined in SQL. NULL sorts first ascending in both.
• Groups with a groupInterval are ordered by the interval key (Jan..Dec), not by the raw value.

Extending

use DevExtreme\Data\Aggregation\{Aggregator, CustomAggregators};
use DevExtreme\Data\Filter\{BinaryExpressionInfo, CustomFilterCompilers};
use DevExtreme\Data\Sql\SqlFragment;

CustomAggregators::register('median', fn () => new MedianAggregator()); // extends Aggregator

CustomFilterCompilers::registerBinary(function (BinaryExpressionInfo $i) {
    if ($i->operation !== 'anyof') return null;              // ["category", "anyof", ["a", "b"]]
    return $i->target === 'sql'
        ? new SqlFragment($i->columns->resolve($i->field) . ' IN (?, ?)', $i->value)
        : fn ($item) => in_array(Accessor::read($item, $i->field), $i->value, true);
});

Known limitations

• Dates and timezones. ISO-8601 filter values (2024-05-01T10:00:00.000Z) are compared as wall-clock time; the timezone designator is ignored, nothing is converted. A browser serialises a local Date as UTC, so a record saved at 10:00 in UTC+3 is stored as 07:00 unless your app converts. Store and compare in one timezone.
• Date-only filters in SQL (["at", ">=", "2024-05-01"]) are bound as the plain string and compared by the database with the stored value; ArraySource treats it as midnight. Equality on a datetime column therefore differs between the two.
• PostgreSQL date intervals (year, month, ... grouping) need real date/timestamp columns; EXTRACT does not accept text columns.
• Paging order. Without a primary key (primaryKey option) or defaultSort, SQL does not guarantee a stable order between pages. Set one.
• Expanded groups load every matching row. Like the original, PdoSource builds expanded groups in PHP from the filtered, sorted rows (paging applies to top-level groups afterwards). Collapsed groups (isExpanded: false, which is what DataGrid and PivotGrid request) use GROUP BY and are cheap. Custom aggregators also force this in-PHP path.
• ArraySource holds everything in memory. Use it for small or already-loaded data, not for large tables.
• String ordering and equality follow the database collation in SQL, case-insensitive comparison in memory (see above). LIKE case behaviour on MySQL follows the column collation.
• Numbers. SQL SUM/AVG results are normalised to int/float; very large or high-precision DECIMAL sums can lose precision. Booleans come back as 0/1 on most drivers.
• Rows with DateTimeInterface values (in ArraySource) are serialised by json_encode as objects; convert them to strings first. Group keys that are dates are emitted as ISO-8601.
• Databases. SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB and PostgreSQL only. For others extend Sql\Dialect and pass it to PdoSource.

Framework integrations

• Laravel / Eloquent: omerkoseoglu/devextreme-data-laravel
• Symfony / Doctrine: omerkoseoglu/devextreme-data-symfony

Demo

composer install
composer demo            # http://localhost:8000

A SQLite database (3000 orders) is created on first request. Pages: DataGrid with full CRUD and server-side everything, PivotGrid with date intervals, and an in-memory array example. Client scripts load from the DevExpress and jsDelivr CDNs.

Development

composer test            # PHPUnit (unit + integration + SQL-vs-memory parity)
composer analyse         # PHPStan level 6
composer cs / cs:fix     # PHP-CS-Fixer

The same contract test-suite runs against SQLite by default and against MySQL/PostgreSQL when DEVEXTREME_TEST_MYSQL_DSN / DEVEXTREME_TEST_PGSQL_DSN are set (see phpunit.xml.dist; CI provides both). These tests drop and recreate a table named orders — point them at a throwaway database.

License

MIT. Original work © Developer Express Inc.; see LICENSE.