What is an Entity in CodeIgniter 4?
Why Interviewers Ask This
Foundational questions like this help interviewers calibrate the rest of the interview. A confident, accurate answer signals that you have solid CodeIgniter basics — a prerequisite for any developer role.
Answer
A Entity in CodeIgniter 4 is a class that represents a row of data, similar to an ORM model. Extend CodeIgniter\Entity\Entity. Entities provide automatic casting via the $casts property: protected $casts = ["is_active" => "boolean", "options" => "json", "created_at" => "datetime"] — values are automatically converted when set or retrieved. You can also define getter and setter methods using the getPropertyName() / setPropertyName() convention for mutators. Access properties: $user->name, $user->created_at->format("Y-m-d"). Link a model to an entity: protected $returnType = "App\Entities\User" in the model — all queries now return entity objects. Entities bring a cleaner domain model without the full weight of an ORM.
Pro Tip
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