doctrine2/manual/docs/en/getting-started/starting-new-project.txt

Doctrine_Record is the basic component of every doctrine-based project. There should be atleast one Doctrine_Record for each of your database tables. Doctrine_Record follows the [http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/activeRecord.html Active Record pattern]

Doctrine always adds a primary key column named 'id' to tables that doesn't have any primary keys specified. Only thing you need to for creating database tables is defining a class which extends Doctrine_Record and setting a setTableDefinition method with hasColumn() method calls and by exporting those classes.

Lets say we want to create a database table called 'user' with columns id(primary key), name, username, password and created. Provided that you have already installed Doctrine these few lines of code are all you need:

User.php :
<code type="php">
class User extends Doctrine_Record 
{
    public function setTableDefinition() 
    {
        // set 'user' table columns, note that
        // id column is auto-created as no primary key is specified
        
        $this->hasColumn('name', 'string',30);
        $this->hasColumn('username', 'string',20);
        $this->hasColumn('password', 'string',16);
        $this->hasColumn('created', 'integer',11);
    }
}
</code>

For exporting the user class into database we need a simple build script:

<code type="php">
//require the base Doctrine class
require_once('path-to-doctrine/lib/Doctrine.php');

//register the autoloader
spl_autoload_register(array('Doctrine', 'autoload'));

require_once('User.php');

//set up a connection
Doctrine_Manager::connection('mysql://user:pass@localhost/test');

//export the classes
Doctrine::createTablesFromArray(array('User'));
</code>
We now have a user model that supports basic CRUD opperations!