Loading a Bean

To load a bean from the database use the load() function and pass both the type of the bean and the id:

If the bean cannot be loaded a new empty bean will be dispensed with id 0. To check whether a bean has been loaded correctly you can verify the id using:

This behaviour is very useful. For instance, consider loading a page bean:

If the page does exists, the contents of the page will be shown in the form to allow the user to update the page. However if the page does not exist, what are we going to do? Well the page is gone after all (maybe someone has removed the page?), so we can just as well present the user with an empty form. This saves a lot of unnecessary if-then-else code.

After a bean has been loaded, you can simply access properties like you expect:

Properties of a loaded bean only contain STRING or NULL values.

Batch Loader

To load a batch of beans at once:

In RedBeanPHP 3.5 you can also use R::loadAll instead of R::batch. loadAll() is nothing more than an alias.

Counting

To count beans:

Since RedBeanPHP 3.3 you can also add some SQL:
R::count('page',' chapter = ?',array($chapter))

Empty Beans

Remember: If the bean cannot be loaded a new empty bean will be dispensed with id 0.

Next: learn how to delete a bean.