CakePHP bindModel HABTM Save - cakephp

Question

I want to create a binding from one model to my User model on the fly so that the JOIN is not called every time that I perform a find on that model. I am using the binding to perform a HABTM save. However, when I use the bindModel function, the HABTM data is not saved in the database.
What makes this odd is that if I move my binding to the User model, then the save works perfectly. I don't see any indication in the documentation that the save behavior would be different when the association is made in the model versus the bindModel function (though, I may have missed it if there is any).
Here is my bindModel code in my controller:
$this->User->bindModel(
array(
'hasAndBelongsToMany' => array(
'Othermodel' => array(
'className' => 'Othermodel',
'joinTable' => 'othermodels_users',
'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'othermodel_id',
'unique' => true,
)
)
)
);
if($res = $this->User->save($data)){
return true;
}
And this is my user model.
class User extends AppModel {
public $name = 'User';
public $belongsTo = array();
public $hasOne = array();
public $hasMany = array();
public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'Othermodel' => array(
'className' => 'Othermodel',
'joinTable' => 'othermodels_users',
'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'othermodel_id',
'unique' => true
)
);
Again, I only have the relationship active in one place at one time, so I know the problem is not with the binding itself. It seems the problem is solely related to the fact that I have tried to use bindModel. Is this the intended behavior?

Answer 1

Based on the responses in this article, it looks like the bindModel function only exists for finds.
CakePHP: Bind Model not working
Though there's no information in the CakePHP 1.3 documentation that states that the bind is only for finds, though that would explain the behavior...
http://book.cakephp.org/1.3/en/The-Manual/Developing-with-CakePHP/Models.html
So, I am marking this as answered.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but are you sure you are not doing any other find operations between the binding and the save. bindModel only binds the model for the next find operation so you may need to pass true through to bindModel to tell it to keep the binding around.
Relevant links: CakePHP: Bind Model not working and http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php/browse_thread/thread/316c9796603eac57?pli=1.
I hope this helps.

Answer 3

Try this,
$this->Message->bindModel(
array(
'belongsTo'=>array(
'User'=>array(
'foreignKey'=>false,
'conditions'=>array('Npl.to=User.id '),
'fields'=>array('recive')
),
'User_e'=>array(
'className'=>'User',
'foreignKey'=>false,
'alias'=>'User_e',
'conditions'=>array('Npl.from=User_e.id '),
'fields'=>array('recive')
)
)
)
);