Avoid repository call in objects (ie lazy load)

location.php

<?php

namespace ezp\Content;

class Location extends Base implements \ezp\DomainObjectInterface
{
    // lots of stuff before

    /**
     * Parent Location of the Location or a Proxy object representing it
     *
     * @var Proxy|Location
     */
    protected $parent;
    // replace $parentId public property ?
    // and if we need to get only the parentId, we can add a dynamicProperty


    /**
     * Sets the parent
     *
     * @param Proxy|Location $parentLocation
     * @return void
     */
    protected function setParent( $parentLocation )
    {
        $this->parent = $parentLocation;
    }

    protected function getParent()
    {
        if ( $this->parent instanceof Proxy )
        {
            $this->parent = $this->parent->load();
        }
        return $this->parent;
    }

    // lots of stuff after
}

proxy.php

<?php

namespace ezp\Base;

class Proxy
{

    /**
     * A service object
     *
     * @var Service
     */
    protected $service;

    /**
     * ID of the object
     *
     * @var mixed
     */
    protected $id;

    /**
     * Method to use on the service to load the object
     * 
     * @var string
     */
    protected $method;

    /**
     * __construct
     *
     * @param Services $service
     * @param mixed $id
     * @param string $method
     */
    public function __construct( Services $service, $id, $method = 'load' )
    {
        $this->service = $service;
        $this->id = $id;
        $this->method = $method;
    }


    public function load()
    {
        return call_user_func( array( $this->service, $this->method ), $this->id );
    }

}

?>

That sounds a good idea if we really need to avoid repository/service calls in domain objects.

that's close to Reference in the consolidated API doc except that in the doc, reference seems to be defined only for Content while the example here is about Location and we'll probably need the same mechanism for others objects (Section, User?, ...)

As discussed it is a proxy object, and like collections it is generic, something like this perhaps:

interface Proxy
{
    public function __construct( Handler $handler, int $id, string $function = 'load' );

    /**
     * Load the object this proxy object represent
     *
     * @return DomainObject
     */
    public function load();
}