Cakephp Model Association Not kicking in - cakephp

Question

//index.ctp, this forms points to action updateData in profilesController
$this->Form->input('User.lastname');
$this->Form->input('Profile.age');
$this->Form->input('Profile.height');
$this->Form->input('Associate.city');
$this->Form->end('Submit');
//user.php
Class User extends AppModel {
var $hasOne = array('Profile', 'Associate'};
var $primaryKey = 'user_id';
}
//profile.php
Class Profile extends AppModel {
var $belongsTo = array('User');
var $hasOne = 'Associate';
var $primaryKey = 'user_id';
}
//associate.php
Class Associate extends AppModel {
var $belongsTo = array('User');
var $primaryKey = 'user_id';
}
//profiles_controller.php
Class ProfilesController extends AppController{
function updateData(){
//output incoming request for debugging purposes
debug($this->request->data);
//here i fetch the db to get the id of user
$options =
array('conditions' => array('User.username' => $this->Auth->user('username')),
'fields' => array('User.id')
);
//find user id so we can find user in related tables
$id = $this->Profile->User->find('first', $options);
//here I modify request data so cakephp finds the users through primaryKeys
$this->request->data['Profile']['user_id'] = $id['User']['id'];
$this->request->data['Associate']['user_id'] = $id['User']['id'];
$this->request->data['User']['id'] = $id['User']['id'];
if($this->request->is('post'){
//this updates data in table no problem
$this->Profile->save($this->request->data);
//this updates data in table no problem either
$this->Profile->Associate->save($this->request->data);
//this returns false...it breaks here
$this->Profile->User->save($this->request->data);
}
}
}
Table structure:
User
|id|int|auto increment
|firstname|varchar
|lastname|varchar
|date|timestamp
Profile
|id|int|autoincrement
|user_id|int
|age|int
|height|int
Associate
|id|int|autoincrement
|user_id|int
|city|varchar
|country|varchar
Ok I know what some of you might tell me, why do I do this on the profilesController and
not on the UsersController. Well, my idea is to separate some actual important user
data from the profile data so it's my intention to write the code for profile on the ProfilesController...as I was developing I was assuming that the same Model association would have automatically updated the User.lastname field in the User table..but that is the part where my code breaks and I have tried but I can't make it work
The current association in my mind at least is as follows:
User has one Profile
User has one Associate
Profile belongs to User
Associate belongs to Profile and User
Can anyone tell me what am I doing wrong? i am following what I think is a logical approach for my application, cakephp updates Profile and Associate models but User remains unaffected.

Answer 1

Assuming the primaryKey of your users table is 'id', just remove all of the $primaryKey lines, and try again.
The only reason to set the primary key is if it doesn't follow the default that CakePHP has in place. I would GUESS (can't see your tables) that the primaryKey field in your 'users' table isn't 'user_id' - more likely it's just 'id', and in the other tables, it's 'user_id'. If that's the case, there's no need to specify the $primaryKey, since that's the default of CakePHP.

Answer 2

As it turns out after reading the cakephp documentation (and obviously being a n00b) the reason why my code was breaking is because I had a callback beforeSave in my model. I didn't know that in order to save data I had to disable the callback which was unrelated to the part of the code I presented to you. The solution in a case like this is to do as follows:
$this->Profile->User->save($this->request->data, array('callbacks' => false));
I don't know you guys but sometimes I feel the cakephp documentation is a little too simplistic, I discover this by looking at the API.