find(1234) including relationships

I am having a model "Events" (Zend_Db_Table_Abstract) that's got various relationships to other models. Usually I think I would do something like this to find it and its relationships:

$events = new Events();
$event = $events->find($id)->current();
$eventsRelationship1 = $event->findDependentRowset('Relationship1');

As the relationship is already set up I am wondering if there's any sort of automatic join available or something. Every time I fetch my event I need to have all the relationships, too. Currently I see only two ways to achieve that:

1. Build the query myself, hard coded. Don't like this, because it's working around the already set up relationship and "model method convenience".
2. Fetch every related object with a single query. This one's ugly, too, as I have to trigger too many queries.

This goes even a step further when thinking about getting a set of multiple rows. For a single event I may query the database multiple times, but when fetching 100 rows j开发者_JAVA技巧oins are just elementary.

So, does anyone know a way to create joins by using those relationships or is there no other way than hardcoding the query?

Thanks in advance

Arne

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The way to solve this challenge is to 'upgrade' your database access to use the dataMapper pattern.

You are essentially adding an extra layer between the model in your application an their representation in the db. This mapper layer allows you read/write data from different tables - rather than a direct link between one model and one table.

Here is a good tutorial to follow. (There are some bits you can skip - I left out all the getters and setters as its just me using the code).

It takes a little while to get your head round the way it works, when you've just been using Zend_Db_Table_Abstract, but it is worth it.