cant edit data after using a find but needed a get - cakephp

Question

I cant edit data from a table of rows from a find command as I get an unknown method 'isNew'. I understand I didnt use a get command to retrieve the data but I used a find instead. The data returned is correct (array given below) but it is in the wrong format . I used a query and need to convert to an entity but I dont know how to do this.
My question is how do I get data with a get command with where conditions if I need to use get for edit functions to make this work?
https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/issues/5262
Argument 1 passed to Cake\ORM\Table::patchEntity() must be an instance of Cake\Datasource\EntityInterface, instance of Cake\ORM\Query given
public function edit2($id = null)
{
$a3 = '2016-05-28';
$a4 = '2016-06-01';
$lessons = $this->find()
->contain(['Tutors', 'Subjects', 'TutoringTypes', 'Terms', 'Students'])
->select([
'Lessons.id', 'Lessons.lesson_date', 'Lessons.lesson_plan',
'Tutors.id', 'Tutors.first_name', 'Tutors.last_name',
'Subjects.name', 'TutoringTypes.value'
])
->where([
'Lessons.lesson_date >' => $a3,
'Lessons.lesson_date <' => $a4,
'Lessons.tutor_id' => 12
])
->order(['Lessons.lesson_date' => 'ASC'])
->hydrate(true);
$lessons->matching('Students', function ($q) use ($a8) {
return $q
->select(['Students.id', 'Students.first_name', 'Students.last_name'])
->where(['Students.first_name like' => '%' . $a8 . '%']);
});
if ($this->request->is(['patch', 'post', 'put'])) {
debug($this->request->data);
$lessons = $this->Lessons->patchEntity($lessons, $this->request->data);
if ($this->Lessons->save($lesson)) {
$this->Flash->success(__('The lesson has been saved.'));
return $this->redirect(['action' => 'edit2']);
} else {
$this->Flash->error(__('The lesson could not be saved. Please, try again.'));
}
}
$this->set(compact('lessons'));
$this->set('_serialize', ['lessons']);
}
view
<?php foreach ($lessons as $key => $item):
//foreach ($query3 as $item):
?>
<tr>
<?php echo $this->Form->hidden($key . '.id', ['label' => '', 'value' => $item->id]) ?>
<td><?= $item->id ?></td>
<td><?= $item->lesson_date ?></td>
<td><?= $item->tutor->first_name . ' ' . $item->tutor->last_name ?></td>
<td><?= $item->students[0]->first_name . ' ' . $item->students[0]->last_name ?></td>
<td><?= $item->subject->name ?></td>
<td><?= $item->tutoring_type->value ?></td>
<td><?php echo $this->Form->input($key . '.lesson_plan', [
'label' => '',
'value' => $item->lesson_plan,
'style' => 'width: 300px; height:50px;'
]) ?></td>
</tr>
<?php endforeach; ?>
returned data
[
(int) 0 => [
'id' => '12397',
'lesson_plan' => 'hello'
],
(int) 1 => [
'id' => '12408',
'lesson_plan' => ''
],
(int) 2 => [
'id' => '14432',
'lesson_plan' => ''
],
(int) 3 => [
'id' => '12419',
'lesson_plan' => ''
],
(int) 4 => [
'id' => '12441',
'lesson_plan' => ''
]
]

Answer 1

The reason for the error is $lessons is a query returning 5 objects. It's illogical to call save on it as if it were one lesson.
Save one entity at a time
If the submitted data is the structure shown in the question, code similar to this will do what you expect:
if ($this->request->is(['patch', 'post', 'put'])) {
$patched = $this->Lessons->patchEntities($lessons, $this->request->data());
foreach ($patched as $entity) {
$this->Lessons->save($entity);
}
}
Note that how to patch multiple entries is covered in the docs