The use of alternative ID system.

altIDsnippet.php

<?php

/**
 * This is a simple search function by ID. An alternate ID(AID) key is a candidate key that 
 * is UNIQUE and is a natural key. This is used when surrogate keys are applied but a 
 * user want to search by a unique identifying name. Whilst primary keys(PK) called 'id'
 * are UNSIGNED INT, the AID keys are usually VARCHAR. Such an example is a User entity. 
 * A user entity has 'id' as PK and 'username' as its AID. When someone wants to search 
 * by 'username'.
 * 
 * This snippet requires Eloquent and Repofuck installed. To use this, the entity class 
 * must be a descendant of Model class and has $alternateIdKey property.
 */

/**
 * Searches using the given id value.
 * 
 * @param string $entityName
 * @param string|int $idvalue
 * @return Model|null $entity
 */
public function find($entityName, $idValue){
		
		$repo = $this->repo;
        
        //Finds the entity and chooses it from the repo.
		if(!$this->resetEntity($entityName)){
			return null;
		}

		if (is_numeric($idValue)){
			//DECIMAL IDs DO NOT EXIST
			$idValue = (int)$idValue;
			$entity = $repo->find($idValue);
		} else {
			$alternateIdKey = $repo->entities->current()->getAlternateIdKey();
			$entity = $repo->first($alternateIdKey,$idValue);
		}

		return $entity;
	}