How do models work in CakePHP 3? - database

Question

Recently I was given a work on a project that is being made in CakePHP 3. The project has some basic function working already and I was asked to create some new functionalities.
My understanding of PHP and MVC comes from CodeIgniter, where I have used Active Record to work with the database.
In CI, the Model was just Model. Here in Cake, I see an Entity, Table and Behavior. I somehow understood this (for me) new concept by asking around my colleagues. Now I just want to finish my assignment without asking them anything further.
So, it is a project management portal. As an Admin, you log in and you manage projects. People then come and join the project.
There are two tables I need to use:
users Table with info such as firstname, lastname, phone, address etc.
users_projects Table that stores user_id and report_id [they are Foreign Keys to users Table and reports Table respectively]
My task is to create a page where you can see who has joined in a particular project in a paginated table fashion with info from Users table such as name, surname, phone, etc..
I have prepared a new Controller called ReportsController in which I have created new participants method, so when you visit /admin/reports/participants/$project_id, it gives you the table with users joined in particular project.
ReportsController
public function participants($project_id = null)
{
$this->loadModel('Projects');
$participants = $this->Projects->selectAllProjectParticipantsByID($project_id);
foreach ($participants as $participant){
echo $participant->users[0]->firstname;
//dump($participant);
}
//dump($participants);
}
ProjectsTable
public function selectAllProjectParticipantsByID($project_id){
// return $this->find()->where(['project_id' => $project_id]);
// return $this->find()->where(['project_id' => $project_id]);
return $this->find('all')->contain([$project_id]);
}
Reports/participants template
<div class="col-xs-9">
<h3><?= __('Participants Report for') ?>
<small><?= __('Participants Report') ?></small>
</h3>
<table class="table table-bordered" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<thead>
<thead>
<tr>
<!-- <th colspan="2">--><?//= $this->Paginator->sort('id') ?><!--</th>-->
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('firstname', __('First Name')) ?></th>
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('lastname', __('Last Name')) ?></th>
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('phone', __('Phone')) ?></th>
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('address', __('Address')) ?></th>
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('personType', __('Person Type')) ?></th>
<th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('status', __('Status')) ?></th>
<th class="actions text-right"><?= __('More Info') ?></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="sortable" data-url="<?= $this->Url->build(['controller' => 'QuestionSets', 'action' => 'reorder']) ?>">
</tbody>
</table>
<ul class="pagination">
</ul>
The result I get so far is following:
Error PrintScreen png
Now I have been reading about CakePHP's Pagination, Data Model, Templating etc for 16 hours now but I still am unable to get the results, which is really frustrating since I know I would have done this in another framework in a matter of minutes.
I best learn by example, sometimes I get lost by reading all the techy words in documentations, so you helping me is the best way you can teach me something.

Answer 1

Well, this question looks like little broad but still I want to point out following things:
Codeigniter vs CakePHP
Just as you mentioned as CakePHP covers many things/features,learning curve of cakephp is not as easy as CodeIgniter. And I would say you need to spend little more time for CakePHP documentation (CakePHP Cookbook).
One of the key advantages of CakePHP is that it provides ready to use templates. When you start to understand CakePHP relations and conventions, you will certainly feel more comfortable.
And I bet when you understand things, you can do much things with CakePHP than you do with CodeIgniter in easier fashion.
Where to start ?
Have you ever done CakePHP blog tutorials? If not this is the best place to start CakePHP. When you finished you will get basics things in CakePHP well. If you escape these basics things it would be hard to understand cakephp conventions,relations and MVC. See here (Cakephp3 blog tutorial.)
The things you did in CodeIgniter model,is basically done with table objects (eg.UsersTable.php) in CakePHP. These objects provide access to collections of data. They allow you to save new records, modify/delete existing ones, define relations, and perform bulk operations.
Talking about the error:
You need to know about what is contain and what to contain:
$this->find('all')->contain([$project_id]);
You need to contain tables (like Users) not the any field of tables as you did above. Again you will understand these things when you complete blog tutorial and which is pretty straightforward.