In a CakePHP, app, let's assume I have two models: Team and User. Those models are associated with each other in a HABTM relationship (joined by table teams_users).
Say we have a form where someone can specify details to create a new Team and User, at the same time.
What is the cleanest, most straightforward way to create those records simultaneously, with an association to each other?
What are the "gotchas" for naming form fields, and processing in the Controller?
I want to do this in the most Cake friendly way, so that I'm able to return validation errors on both models.
This method would go into your Team model, assuming all assocs and HABTM are set up right.
public function createTeam($postData) {
$this->set($postData);
$this->User->set($postData);
$validTeam = $this->validates();
$validUser = $this->User->validates()
if ($validTeam && $validUser) {
$this->create();
$this->save($postData, array('validate' => false);
$this->User->create();
$this->User->save($postData, array('validate' => false);
$this->TeamsUser->create();
$this->TeamsUser->save(array(
'TeamsUser' => array(
'user_id' => $this->getLastInsertId()
'team_id' => $this->User->getLastInsertId()
)
));
return true;
}
return false;
}
Related
I'm writing an application that uses Zend Framework 2 and Doctrine (both the latest stable version).
There is much documenation (mainly tutorials and blog posts) that deal with saving doctrine entities to the database in combination with Zend Form. Unfortunately they only deal with simple entities that do not have one-to-many or many-to-many relationships.
This is one of those examples that i have adopted into my own code.
http://www.jasongrimes.org/2012/01/using-doctrine-2-in-zend-framework-2/
I understand that in the Album Entity of this example, the artist is a string to keep the (already lengthy) tutorial as simple as possible. But in a real world situation this would of course be a one-to-many releationship with an Artist Entity (or even a many-to-many). In the view, a select-box could be displayed where the artist can be selected, listing all the artist-entities that could be found in the database, so the right one can be selected.
Following the example with the album, this is how i've set up an 'edit' Action in my controller:
public function editAction()
{
// determine the id of the album we're editing
$id = $this->params()->fromRoute("id", false);
$request = $this->getRequest();
// load and set up form
$form = new AlbumForm();
$form->prepareElements();
$form->get("submit")->setAttribute("label", "Edit");
// retrieve album from the service layer
$album = $this->getSl()->get("Application\Service\AlbumService")->findOneByAlbumId($id);
$form->setBindOnValidate(false);
$form->bind($album);
if ($request->isPost()) {
$form->setData($request->getPost());
if ($form->isValid()) {
// bind formvalues to entity and save it
$form->bindValues();
$this->getEm()->flush();
// redirect to album
return $this->redirect()->toRoute("index/album/view", array("id"=>$id));
}
}
$data = array(
"album" => $album,
"form" => $form
);
return new ViewModel($data);
}
How would this example need to be altered if the artist wasn't a string, but an Artist Entity?
And suppose the album also has multiple Track Entities, how would those be processed?
The example would not need to be changed at all, the changes will happen with your entity and your form.
This is a good reference: Doctrine Orm Mapping
So to save yourself a lot of extra work, your OnToMany relationship would use: cascade = persist:
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Artist" , mappedBy="album" , cascade={"persist"})
*/
private $artist;
When it comes to persisting the form object, the entity knows it must save the associated entity as well. If you did not include this, then you would have to do it manually using a collection.
To make like easier with your form, you can use Doctrines Object Select like this:
$this->add(
[
'type' => 'DoctrineModule\Form\Element\ObjectSelect',
'name' => 'artist',
'options' => [
'object_manager' => $this->objectManager,
'target_class' => 'Artist\Entity\Artist',
'property' => 'name', //the name field in Artist, can be any field
'label' => 'Artist',
'instructions' => 'Artists connected to this album'
],
'attributes' => [
'class' => '', //Add any classes you want in your form here
'multiple' => true, //You can select more than one artist
'required' => 'required',
]
]
);
So now your form takes care of the collection for you, the controller as per your example does not need to change since the entity will take care of the persisting...
Hope this gets you on track.
I have two main tables:
Books (id, author, isbn, ...)
Users (id, username, password, ...)
I am looking at building an application, wherein User1 logs in and can:
view list of all books (eg. only title)
view details (author, isbn, ...) of only certain books that he should have access to
Each user may have access to a certain set of books. I don't need various roles.
I have setup the MVC and the relationships (habtm) for the above. I am now looking at developing the permissions. Do you think the CakePHP ACL solves this problem or is it overkill?
If it is overkill, is there another component or easier way to build the desired functionality?
Yes, ACL is overkill
ACL is a very powerful and flexible system - but it doesn't come free it brings with it complexity. Unless you have a usecase where you absolutely need fine-grained permissions (the two rules you've described do not fit this) - don't use ACL.
Restricting to books a user he has added
This rule is easy to implement - e.g. add to relevant find calls:
$results = $BookModelInstance->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array(
'created_by' => AuthComponent::user('id')
)
));
Restricting to books a user he has bought
This rule is also easy to implement, thought slightly more involved:
$BookModelInstance->bindModel(array(
'hasOne' => array( // Yes, hasOne not hasMany
'MyPurchase' => array(
'className' => 'Purchase',
'foriegnKey' => 'user_id'
)
)
));
$results = $BookModelInstance->find('all', array(
'recursive' => 0, // to join hasOne+belongsTo associations into the query
'conditions' => array(
'MyPurchase.user_id' = AuthComponent::user('id'),
)
));
The bindModel call achieves the equivalent of SELECT .. FROM books LEFT JOIN book_users.. The conditions in the find call will therefore restrict results to books where there is a record of the user purchasing the book.
Putting them both together
A simplistic implementation of automatically applying both these rules would be:
model Book extends AppModel {
public $actsAs = array('Containable');
public $restrictToUser = true;
public function beforeSave($options = array()) {
if (!$this->id) {
// Store who created this book
$this->data[$this->alias]['created_by'] = AuthComponent::user('id');
}
return true;
}
public function beforeFind($queryData) {
if (!$this->restrictToUser) {
// we don't want to apply user-level restrictions
return true;
}
$userId = AuthComponent::user('id');
if (!$userId) {
// we want to restrict to the current user - there isn't one.
return false;
}
// define the association to the purchase table
$this->bindModel(array(
'hasOne' => array(
'MyPurchase' => array(
'className' => 'Purchase',
'foriegnKey' => 'user_id'
)
)
));
//ensure the purchase table is included in the current query
$queryData['contain']['MyPurchase'] = array();
// restrict to rows created by the current user, OR purchased by the current user
$queryData['conditions']['OR'] = array(
$this->alias '.created_by' => $userId,
'MyPurchase.user_id' => $userId
);
return $queryData;
}
}
This requires a field created_by (or equivalent) to be in the books table, and uses containable to ensure that the purchases table (or equivalent) is included in all relevant queries.
Most simple solution: Add a condition in your controller, so:
$this->set('books', $this->Book->find(
'all',
array('conditions' => array('Book.user_id' => $user['User']['id']))
);
Disadvantages: You will likely create duplicate code here since this check has to happen also in other places. Also when you start testing your model you can only test that it returns books, you cannot test a model method like: getMyBooks($userId). So no, not the preferred solution.
Next solution: Check in the model
It could be done by a check in for example your books model. You could just check in the afterfind() method whether the returned records are allowed or not. In your beforefind you could also add an additional condition to all queries.
In general a model should be fat so I would suggest implementing clear methods there like: getAllBooks, getBooksOfUser($User), getLatestBooksOfUser($User) etc.
Why is this a nice implementation? Because you now manage the access levels in a central place. You can test the model and you are sure it does only return books from this user.
With beforeSave etc. you can intervene every save attempt and first check: hey, you want to save this but is this really your book?
ACL solution
But in general it could be wise to implement some ACL solution (preferably the built in one) since that makes you application much more future proof. It allows flexibility, for example:
Each user may have access to a certain set of books. I don't need various roles.
That's true for now but the future can change it. So if you need a quick solution just custom filter the records. But think about the future.
I have models Person and Phone/Email with HABTM relationship. After some pain I found out, that my life is easier, when I break HABTM into: Person hasMany PeoplePhone, Phone hasMany PeoplePhone, PeoplePhone belongsTo (Person,Phone). Well, I don't need any help with this :-) now, my problem is different:
Before I can pair Person with his Phone or Email, I need to save this Phone/Email and then get its ID.
Now I would like to save only unique Phones and unique Emails, so I have created this method in app_model.php:
function saveUnique($data = null, $unique_fieldname = null)
{
if (! $data) { return false; }
if (! $unique_fieldname) { return false; }
$id = $this->field('id', array($unique_fieldname => $data[$this->name][$unique_fieldname]));
if ($id)
{
$this->read(null, $id);
}
else
{
$this->create();
$this->set($data);
if (! $this->validates()) { return false; }
if (! $this->save()) { return false; }
}
return true;
}
It seems to work, but I am all new to CakePHP. How would CakePHP guru solve this function/method?
Thank you very much for your time.
-Petr
If I were you, I would stick with default Cake functionality rather than what you are doing. All of this functionality is built into Cake, so why reinvent the wheel?
First, HABTM relationships already work as you have broken them out. You can access the join models by adding with in your model associations. This should give you access to the intersection table data.
$hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'Phone' => array(
'className' => 'Phone',
'joinTable' => 'persons_phones',
'foreignKey' => 'person_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'phone_id',
'unique' => false,
'with' => 'PersonsPhones'
)
);
As far as your unique phone and email requirements go, why not use Cake's built in validation to do the checking for you? That way, you just call the save function and then Cake will do all the checking for you.
For instance, if a person only has one email address, then do this in the person model. This will validate that the input is an email address and that it is a unique email address in the database. You can do this validation with any field and build custom validation rules with ease.
public $validate = array(
'email' => array(
'email' => array(
'rule' => 'email',
'message' => 'You must enter an email address.'
),
'isUnique' => array(
'rule' => 'isUnique',
'message' => 'An account with this email address already exists.'
)
)
);
I take it that there is a reason for why you would use HABTM for an email address. Normally, people would not share email addresses, so hasMany would probably be a better relationship. I can see it working for phone as people do share phone numbers frequently. I say this so that you are sure that HABTM is the relationship you really want to use.
I've only been using CakePHP for a couple months but I would implement it a little different.
I'd add a UNIQUE index on person_id & email_id in my PeopleEmail table (do the same thing in PeoplePhone). This way we're not accidentally saving duplicate data, our physical schematic prevents duplicate records before they're even stored.
Now we just have to keep an eye out for the SQL error being thrown. I haven't dug too deep into this aspect of Cake yet but I do know the base AppModel class has an onError() method that may provide useful in this regard.
I'm having trouble with my HABTM relationship in CakePHP.
I have two models like so: Department HABTM Location. One large company has many buildings, and each building provides a limited number of services. Each building also has its own webpage, so in addition to the HABTM relationship itself, each HABTM row also has a url field where the user can visit to find additional information about the service they're interested and how it operates at the building they're interested in.
I've set up the models like so:
<?php
class Location extends AppModel {
var $name = 'Location';
var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'Department' => array(
'with' => 'DepartmentsLocation',
'unique' => true
)
);
}
?>
<?php
class Department extends AppModel {
var $name = 'Department';
var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'Location' => array(
'with' => 'DepartmentsLocation',
'unique' => true
)
);
}
?>
<?php
class DepartmentsLocation extends AppModel {
var $name = 'DepartmentsLocation';
var $belongsTo = array(
'Department',
'Location'
);
// I'm pretty sure this method is unrelated. It's not being called when this error
// occurs. Its purpose is to prevent having two HABTM rows with the same location
// and department.
function beforeSave() {
// kill any existing rows with same associations
$this->log(__FILE__ . ": killing existing HABTM rows", LOG_DEBUG);
$result = $this->find('all', array("conditions" =>
array("location_id" => $this->data['DepartmentsLocation']['location_id'],
"department_id" => $this->data['DepartmentsLocation']['department_id'])));
foreach($result as $row) {
$this->delete($row['DepartmentsLocation']['id']);
}
return true;
}
}
?>
The controllers are completely uninteresting.
The problem:
If I edit the name of a Location, all of the DepartmentsLocations that were linked to that Location are re-created with empty URLs. Since the models specify that unique is true, this also causes all of the newer rows to overwrite the older rows, which essentially destroys all of the URLs.
I would like to know two things:
Can I stop this? If so, how?
And, on a less technical and more whiney note: Why does this even happen? It seems bizarre to me that editing a field through Cake should cause so much trouble, when I can easily go through phpMyAdmin, edit the Location name there, and get exactly the result I would expect. Why does CakePHP touch the HABTM data when I'm just editing a field on a row? It's not even a foreign key!
From the CookBook the 1st problem is:
By default when saving a
HasAndBelongsToMany relationship, Cake
will delete all rows on the join table
before saving new ones.
I am not quite sure why Cake is trying to save the HABTM data even though you don't have a foreign key in your data, but there is an easy solution for that. Simply destroy the association for the save call:
$this->Location->unbindModel(
array('hasAndBelongsToMany' => array('Department'))
);
I'm thinking of one reason why this might be happening. When you retrieve Location, you also retrieve locations_departments data. And when you do a save($this->data) it looks for models in the array and saves them.
A way to solve this is setting the recursive attribute (of a model) to -1 or 0 (try, I'm not sure, just print out the data to see what comes out). You can set it in the model: var $recursive = -1; or in the controller method (action): $this->ModelName->recursive = -1;
More about recursive: http://book.cakephp.org/view/439/recursive
It's really similar to what harpax suggested, just if you don't need that data, tell it to Cake, so that it won't fetch it.
Trouble is that when saving your Location, you gave the save method an array containing all the DepartmentsLocations too. Thus CakePHP destroys everything and try to recreate it.
This is a common mistake with cake since it will often pull far too many results for you.
Be sure to pass only the data that needs to be saved, or better to fetch only the datas you need.
I have a Projects table and a Users table which are linked by a HABTM relation. In the "add" new Project page I have a multiple checkbox section to select Users for the new project. I want to have at least one User for the Project. What's the best way to approach this in CakePHP ?
Try this:
// app/models/project.php
/**
* An additional validation check to ensure at least one User is
* selected. Spoofs Cake into thinking that there are validation
* errors on the Project model by invalidating a non-existent field
* on the Project model, then also invalidates the habtm field as
* well, so when the form is re-displayed, the error is displayed
* on the User field.
**/
function beforeValidate() {
if (!isset($this->data['User']['User'])
|| empty($this->data['User']['User'])) {
$this->invalidate('non_existent_field'); // fake validation error on Project
$this->User->invalidate('User', 'Please select at least one user');
}
return true;
}
I stumbled on the same issue, but now - 3 years later - with CakePHP 2.3.
To be clear; Group has and belongs to User. I've had a form like this:
// View/Groups/add.ctp
echo $this->Form->input('name');
echo $this->Form->input('User');
With the validation rule like in user448164's answer:
// Model/Group.php
public $validate = array(
'User' => array(
'rule' => array('multiple', array('min' => 1)),
'message' => 'Please select one or more users'
)
);
That didn't work, after Googling for it, I found this question which couldn't still be the best solution. Then I tried several things, and discovered this to work just fine:
// View/Groups/add.ctp
echo $this->Form->input('name');
echo $this->Form->input('Group.User');
Way too easy solution, but had to dig into it to find out it works this way.
Hopefully it helps somebody one day.
Update for CakePHP 2.4.x (possibly 2.3.x as well)
When I wrote this answer, I was using CakePHP 2.3.x. Back then it worked perfectly for both validating and saving the data. Now when applying the same code on a new project, using CakePHP 2.4.x, it didn't work anymore.
I created a test case, using the following code:
$data = array(
'User' => array(
'Client' => array(8)
),
);
$this->User->create();
$this->User->saveAll($data);
My first thought was: Saving all means saving all "root" models, what actually makes sense to me. To save deeper than just the "root" ones, you'll have to add the deep option. So I ended up with the following code:
$data = array(
'User' => array(
'Client' => array(8)
),
);
$this->User->create();
$this->User->saveAll($data, array('deep' => true));
Works like a charm! Happy coding. :)
Update (2014/03/06)
Struggling with the same problem again, in this case with hasMany instead of habtm. Seems like it behaves the same way. But I found myself looking for this answer again, and got confused.
I'd like to make clear that it's key to use Group.User instead of User in your input. Else it won't use the User model validation.
I've just been looking at his problem myself on a project and came across a slightly more elegant solution, as long as you're only dealing with a habtm relationship and you need to ensure that at least one checkbox is selected.
so for example you're editing a Project and you want it to be associated with at least one user
Add this to beforeValidate()
// check habtm model and add to data
foreach($this->hasAndBelongsToMany as $k=>$v) {
if(isset($this->data[$k][$k]))
{
$this->data[$this->alias][$k] = $this->data[$k][$k];
}
}
In the validation rules add the following:
'User' => array(
'rule' => array('multiple', array('min' => 1)),
'message' => 'Please select one or more users'
)
teknoid's blog has a pretty in depth solution to your issue here. The most Cakey way of doing this would be to add custom validation to your model, as you mention in your comment above. Check out http://teknoid.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/how-to-validate-habtm-data/
From the article, where Tag HABTM Post (:: Project HABTM Users):
First, we validate the Tag model, by
using the data from the form to ensure
that at least one Tag was selected. If
so, we save the Post and the relevant
Tags.
2016 update for CakePhp 2.7
Full answer here : HABTM form validation with CakePHP 2.x
TL;DR;
AppModel.php
public function beforeValidate($options = array()){
foreach (array_keys($this->hasAndBelongsToMany) as $model){
if(isset($this->data[$model][$model]))
$this->data[$this->name][$model] = $this->data[$model][$model];
}
return true;
}
public function afterValidate($options = array()){
foreach (array_keys($this->hasAndBelongsToMany) as $model){
unset($this->data[$this->name][$model]);
if(isset($this->validationErrors[$model]))
$this->$model->validationErrors[$model] = $this->validationErrors[$model];
}
return true;
}
In the main model of your HABTM :
public $validate = array(
'Tag' => array(
'rule' => array('multiple', array('min' => 1)),
'required' => true,
'message' => 'Please select at least one Tag for this Post.'
)
);
If you are using CakePHP 2.3.x, you may need to add this code to your model in addition to the code that GuidoH provided, otherwise your HABTM model data may not save:
public function beforeSave($options = array()){
foreach (array_keys($this->hasAndBelongsToMany) as $model){
if(isset($this->data[$this->name][$model])){
$this->data[$model][$model] = $this->data[$this->name][$model];
unset($this->data[$this->name][$model]);
}
}
return true;
}
As per my comment on Guido's answer above, I use Guido's answer exactly, however I modify the data with the beforeSave callback before it saves to the database.
I have this issue on Cake 2.4.5+
public function beforeSave($options = array()) {
$temp = $this->data['Group']['User'];
unset($this->data['Group']['User']);
$this->data['User']['User'] = $temp;
return true;
}