Automatically adding of foreign key (userid of logged user) - cakephp

Question

i am a newbie in programming with cakephp, so i have implemented an simple user-game application. There is an "hasMany" relation between users and game. A game is created exactly by one user. Therefore there is a field in the model of game, named "user_id". I am already using the auth component and it is possible that user can login to the system. Now, i want that user can add games to the model, but the user_id should be added automatically( by acessing to session data). How i can achieve that ?
stannis :)

Answer 1

Now, i want that user can add games to the model, but the user_id should be added automatically( by acessing to session data). How i can achieve that ?
First, I highly recommend you to do the official blog tutorial, because it will cover questions like this for you.
In the controller:
public function add() {
if ($this->request->is('post') {
$this->request->data['Game']['user_id'] = $this->Auth->user('id');
$this->Game->save($this->request->data);
}
}
But this can and definitely should be done better by moving the logic into the model, remember: fat models, skinny controllers. Here is a broken down and short example:
// Controller
public function add() {
if ($this->request->is('post') {
$this->Game->add($this->Auth->user('id'), $this->request->data);
}
}
// Model
public function add($userId, $postData) {
$postData[$this->alias]['user_id'] = $userId;
return $this->save($this->request->data);
}
}
Usually you don't want to access the session directly in a model because it requires you to use a static or singleton call to the auth component or the session object, which we want to avoid as much as we can.