CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpcakephpcakephp-2.3
LogixMaster
LogixMaster

Reputation: 586

CakePHP- Saving Related Model Data

Ok, lets say there are two associated models, where the main model has a hasMany relationship with the other model. ex Donor hasMany Donations. I have read most of cake's documentation and I also took note of this (from the doc):

'When working with associated models, it is important to realize that saving model data should always be done by the corresponding CakePHP model. If you are saving a new Post and its associated Comments, then you would use both Post and Comment models during the save operation'(http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/saving-your-data.html)

And as also pointed out by @burzum on another one of my questions : CakePHP - Controller or No Controller? , I am still struggling on how to decide which works best.

So taking the 'Donor and Donation' example mentioned earlier, let's say we want the user to add donation to a donor. So for the user to add a donation, one would need to view a donor, accessing a url of the sort : 'domain/donors/view/1', meaning the user is currently viewing donor with id of 1. Then within that view, let us assume there is button which allows the user to add a donation. Now from what I have been told and from what I read, the add(donation) action should belong to the donationsController.

Let us also assume that the add(donation) action has its own view.. So if I am at 'domain/donors/view/1' the user is redirected to 'domain/donations/add/donor_id:1' where the id of the donor is then retrieved using $this->request->params['named']['post_id'] and set to the FK like so : `$this->request->data['Donation']['donor_id'] = $id;

But I have a gut feeling telling me that this is not the proper way to go and it feels like bad practice jumping from one controller to the other, when having associated models.

Any insight on this ? Is there a general rule of thumb one could apply or follow ? Is it ok to redirect the user from the donorsController's view action to the donationsController's add action ?

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1092

Answers (1)

Riccardo Barbotti
Riccardo Barbotti

Reputation: 155

As far as I know your approach is not wrong, and linking other controllers from a view is normal.

However i prefer (and that's my rule of thumb, i'm not sure is a "best practice") to give the user the change of add an associated model - donations in your case - directly from the view of the "main" model. I've used this kind of approach in my applications, mostly considering the user experience (don't know if it is your case). So, if you are in the edit action of Donor, in the respective view the user can add the Donation and send it to still the edit action of Donor. Here you can save the associated model if the request data are well formatted:

data['Donor'] = array('id'=> XX);
data['Donation'] = array('id' => YY, 'amount' => blabla,...);
$this->Donor->save(data);

That would respect the MVC (no ugly ClassRegistry::Load ... ) and keep the code simple, avoiding to jump from one controller to another. Just my opinion :D

Regards.

Upvotes: 1

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