Propel is a free, open-source (MIT) object-relational mapping toolkit written in PHP. It is also an integral part of the PHP framework Symfony and was the default ORM up to, and including version 1.2.
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The Propel project was started in August 2003, with the availability of beta versions PHP version 5. With version 5, PHP was finally able to provide a level of support for object-oriented programming that both made projects like Propel possible and also created a demand for these hitherto-missing components of large-scale, object-oriented architectures. Propel was originally based on the Apache Torque project, which was a Java language ORM project.
Propel's primary function is to provide a mapping between PHP classes and database tables. To accomplish this Propel includes a generator component which uses source code generation to build PHP classes based on a datamodel definition written in XML. Propel also includes a runtime component which manages connections, transactions, and any idiosyncratic rules that describe the workings of the RDBMS being used with Propel.