Question

At the beginning I am sorry for the title – I don’t know how to call this problem.

Let’s say I have (simplified) classes:

class Articles_Repository {
    public function save(Article_Entity $article) {...}
    public function find($id) {...}
    // Other methods
}

class Article_Entity {
   public $thumbnail_url;
   public $title;
   public $text;
   ...
}

Where should I put “changing thumbnail” – method to upload&crop&save thumbnail for specific article? Into Repository, Entity or somewhere else?

Answer 1

I believe that the best place to put the method is in a Service. I don’t think it’s the Article entity’s responsiblity to manipulate images. Repository’s, even less. The Article simply states that it has a thumbnail, it doesn’t care how the thumbnail was generated .

The controller should pass the uploaded image to a service wich will involve other objects to crop and then save the image (an images repository might work here). Then the thumbnail url will be assigned to the article.