whenever i use a open source library eg. Doctrine i always ending up coding a class (so called Facade) to use the Doctrine library.

so next time i want to create a user i just type:

 $fields = array('name' => 'peter', 'email' => '[email protected]');
 Doctrine_Facade::create_entity($entity, $fields);

then it creates an entity with the provided information.

so i guess, all coders will create their own "Facade".

i wonder how usual it is with open source Facades to download and interact with the open source libraries? is this rare cause i haven't seen any of these. in some frameworks i have seen them called plugins, eg. plugins for twitter api or facebook api.

so whenever you download a library, should you search for plugins/facades on the net, or is it better to just try coding your own? i just thought it would be great for everyone not to reinvent the wheel.

thanks.