Generic Database Types

[ghost]

I'd like to avoid db-specific code for simple logic, and am sure many others feel the same way;

If there was a way to pass a lithium\data\type\DateTime object to model operations and automagically convert it to MongoDB\BSON\UTCDateTime for Mongo and string for MySQL,

That accomplishes the goal. Comparison operator translations for most types are already provided in the Db adapters so this is just another step in that direction. Tentatively, the proposed types are:

DateTime
Timestamp
Geometry (spatial)
Point (spatial)

Need to add a 3-4 operators for the spatial types in each Db adapter (within, intersects, near, and maybe nearSphere sphere), but I think this is a pretty simple and effective concept.

Here's an example for a spatial type:

// Find all people within 100m of {{ $coords = [0.9876543, 255.12345] }}
// Works the same for Mongo, MySQL, etc.

use \People\models\People;
use \lithium\data\type\Point;

People::find("all", [
    'conditions' => [
        'spot' => ['near' => compact("coords") + ['min' => 0, 'max' => Point::metres(100)]]
    ]
]);

This could perhaps be facilitated by merging/refactoring essential components of the li3_geo plugin and making it unnecessary for simple use cases. Thoughts?

Ping @DavidPersson @nateabele