patchEntity appears to erase foreign keys - cakephp

Question

Here's the situation:
I have a table which has a composite key:
CREATE TABLE records (
id int(11) NOT NULL,
pacient_id int(11),
doctor_id int(11),
--
-- bunch of stuff that are null
--
PRIMARY KEY (id, pacient_id, doctor_id),
CONSTRAINT records_ibfk_1 FOREIGN KEY (pacient_id) REFERENCES pacients (id),
CONSTRAINT records_ibfk_2 FOREIGN KEY (doctor_id) REFERENCES doctors (id)
)
so far so good, the problem is when I try to add a record... I get this error
Cannot insert row, some of the primary key values are missing. Got (,
, ), expecting (id, pacient_id, doctor_id)
So I went to the add method in the controller and I started put two debugs. One debuging $this->request->data and other debuging $record itself (after the patchEntity) something like this:
public function add()
{
$record = $this->Records->newEntity();
if ($this->request->is('post')) {
$record = $this->Records->patchEntity($record, $this->request->data);
debug($record);
debug($this->request->data);die;
this code was generated with bake.
the result of debug is:
object(App\Model\Entity\Record) {
'others' => '',
'staging' => '',
'surgery' => '',
'medication' => '',
'alergy' => '',
'[new]' => true,
'[accessible]' => [
'*' => true
],
'[dirty]' => [
'others' => true,
'staging' => true,
'surgery' => true,
'medication' => true,
'alergy' => true
],
'[original]' => [],
'[virtual]' => [],
'[errors]' => [],
'[repository]' => 'Records'
}
and
[
'doctor_id' => '2',
'pacient_id' => '7',
'points_unusual_lost_weigh' => '',
'points_lost_weight' => '',
'lack_apetite' => '',
'dm' => '',
'has' => '',
'dcv' => '',
'drenal' => '',
'others' => '',
'chemotherapy' => '',
'radiotherapy' => '',
'metastasis' => '',
'staging' => '',
'surgery' => '',
'alcoholic' => '',
'smoker' => '',
'smoker_date' => [
'year' => '',
'month' => '',
'day' => ''
],
'intestine_habit' => '',
'medication' => '',
'alergy' => ''
]
see, after patchEntity there is none _id, but, I really don't know why it's not reaching there.
thanks for those who help!
-- EDITED --
answering the first question below from rrd: yes! I did and it looks like this: (here are my associations)
$this->belongsTo('Pacients', [
'foreignKey' => 'pacient_id',
'joinType' => 'INNER'
]);
$this->belongsTo('Doctors', [
'foreignKey' => 'doctor_id',
'joinType' => 'INNER'
]);
second question from ndm: (here is my $_accessible variable)
protected $_accessible = [
'*' => true,
'id' => false,
'pacient_id' => false,
'doctor_id' => false,
];

Answer 1

Just as assumed, the primary key fields are set be non-accessible/mass-assignable.
Either modify the entity code and remove pacient_id and doctor_id, or set them to true, or use the accessibleFields option in the patchEntity call to override the behavior for the passed entity instance only.
See
Cookbook > Database Access & ORM > Entities > Mass Assignment
Cookbook > Database Access & ORM > Saving Data > Changing Accessible Fields
The debug output of the entity is a little misleading in showing only the *, as this suggests that all fields are accessible. This happens because the "empty" array entries are being filtered in order to have only those fields shown that are actually accessible, which however is obviously a problem when * is used, as the exceptions are lost, so there seems to be room for improvement.