Paul M. Jones, founder and lead developer of the Solar Framework for PHP, recently announced the release of Solar Framework 1.0.0Beta4. The very complete and copious release notes can be found here.

In reading the release notes, the main change in Beta4 seems to deal with how models handle child records.

To recap the problem, I very much want to remove the need for the following idiom in records where you have to access a related object:

// where 'foo' is a related record or collection ...

if (! $this->foo) {
    $this->;foo = $this->newRelated('foo');
}

// ... now you can be sure that $this->foo is actually there

The idea is to have related data always come back as a record or collection, never as a null or empty array(), so that you do not have to check it every time for emptiness. I want to be able to get or set `$this->foo` and have it be there automatically.

Beyond this seemingly large change for a Beta release, there are also many smaller changes, additions, and fixes. Most notable among them seem to be improvements in the Solar manual. (This seems to be a theme these days) The Solar manual is now sporting 3 new chapters: Working with Models, Working with Related Models and Views and Layouts by Jon Elofson

The full release announcement can be found on the Solar blog or you can download it straight from the Solar home page.