Populate key or call method during result set iteration

Question

I'm using Propel to retrieve a list of products, some of the products have an image associated with them which is located within an uploads folder and is based on the image id (for example /uploads/products/product_12.jpg) would be the image the product with an id of 12.

As this image record is not stored in the database as a column, I'm unsure as how can I access the image without having to do checks such as file_exists() within the view.

Is it possible to either have a method smilar to $product->getImage() which either returns the image or returns a blank 'Image does not exist' image, or even better, create a key called image which does the same as above and can be accessed via $product->image.

Answer 1

Of course.

Inside your model class (not the Peer one, the other one), create this method getImage() wich will basically do :

public function getImage()
{
  $filepath = '/uploads/products/product_'.$this->getId().'.jpg';
  if (!file_exists($filepath))
  {
    // image doesn't exist, return false or an empty default image
    return false;
  }

  return $filepath;
}