issues with saveAssociated cakephp - cakephp

Question

I'm having some issues trying to save an article that has 4 pictures. The thing is that i need to use the article id in order to name the pictures like article_id."-"$i
Since I have only 4 pictures per article this $i should be from 1 to 4 or from 0 to three.
Now the problem is that in order to achieve this i need to create and save Article model so i can have an id to use, but then after performing all the scripting to make the thumbs and form the names, when I go Article->saveAssociated() i have two times the article record created!! i tried to set the id to "-1" before saving but nothing...
Any suggestion will be very much appreciated !!!
Code:
public function add() {
if ($this->request->is ( 'ajax' )) {
$this->layout = 'ajax';
} else {
$this->layout = 'default';
}
if ($this->request->is ( 'post' )) {
$this->Article->create ();
$this->request->data ['Article'] ['time_stamp'] = date ( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', time () );
if ($this->Article->save($this->request->data) ) {
for ($i=0; $i<4; $i++){
$img_path = "./images/";
$extension[$i] = end(explode('.', $this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image']['name']));
$this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image'] = array('name'=>$this->Article->id."-".$i, 'tmp_name' => $this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image']['tmp_name']);
// $this->request->data['Image'][$i]['name'] = $this->Article->id."-".$i;
$this->request->data['Image'][$i]['ext']= $extension[$i];
$target_path[$i] = $img_path . basename($this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image']['name'].".".$extension[$i]);
if(!move_uploaded_file($this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image']['tmp_name'], $target_path[$i])) {
die(__ ( 'Fatal error, we are all going to die.' ));
}else{
$this->Resize->img($target_path[$i]);
$this->Resize->setNewImage($img_path.basename($this->request->data['Image'][$i]['image']['name']."t.".$extension[$i]));
$this->Resize->setProportionalFlag('H');
$this->Resize->setProportional(1);
$this->Resize->setNewSize(90, 90);
$this->Resize->make();
}
}
$this->Article->id;
pr($this->Article->id);
$this->Article->saveAssociated($this->request->data, array('deep' => true));
//$this->redirect ( array ('action' => 'view', $this->Article->id ) );
pr($this->Article->id);
exit;
$this->Session->setFlash ( __ ( 'Article "' . $this->request->data ["Article"] ["name"] . '" has been saved' ) );
} else {
$this->Session->setFlash ( __ ( 'The article could not be saved. Please, try again.' ) );
}
}
$items = $this->Article->Item->find ( 'list' );
$payments = $this->Article->Payment->find ( 'list' );
$shippings = $this->Article->Shipping->find ( 'list' );
$this->set ( compact ( 'items', 'payments', 'shippings' ) );
}

Answer 1

Instead of
$this->Article->saveAssociated();
which would save the Article AGAIN, just save the images separately using something like this:
foreach($this->request->data['Image'] as &$image) {
$image['name'] = 'whatever_you_want' . $this->Article->id;
$image['article_id'] = $this->Article->id;
}
$this->Article->Image->save($this->request->data['Image']);
Another option (not necessarily better - just another option) would just be to append the newly-created Article's id to the existing Article array, then saveAssociated(). If the Article has an id in it's data, it will update instead of create. I would suggest the first answer above, but - just brainstorming other options in case this helps for someone's scenario:
// 1) save the Article and get it's id
// 2) append the `id` into the Article array
// 3) do your image-name manipulation using the id
// 4) saveAssociated(), which updates the Article and creates the Images