working with temporary table in cakephp 3

Question

I'm working in CakePHP 3.2

I have a table Carts to store products in cart when user is logged in with user_id.

I want addToCart accessible to user without login too. But in this case I want to use temporary table to store the cart data and when user is logged in, transfer all data from temporary table to carts table and delete temporary table.

How to work with temporary table in CakePHP 3 ? Is it a good practice to use temporary data for the same or is there any better alternative to this ?

Edit 2

Values to store in cookie/temp table

product_id
seller_id
seller_product_id
quantity

Associations

product_id is foreign key to products table seller_id is foreign key to sellers table seller_product_id is foreign key to seller_products table

product table is further associated with product_attributes

Currently using carts table with following columns

+-----------+-------------+----------+---------------------+--------+
|  user_id   | product_id  | seller_id | seller_product_id  |quantity |
+-----------+-------------+----------+---------------------+--------+

and this is what I'm doing to retrieve associated data

if (!empty($this->Auth->user('id'))) {
              $user_id = $this->Auth->user('id');

              $g_cart = $this->Carts->find('all', [
                'conditions' => [
                  'user_id' => $user_id,
                ],
                'contain' => [
                  'Products', 'SellerProducts', 'Sellers', 'CartAttributes'
                ]
              ]);
              $g_count = $g_cart->count();

              if (!empty($g_cart)) {
//                foreach($g_cart as $g_c){debug($g_c);}
                  foreach($g_cart as $g_c) {
                    $total_cost += $g_c->quantity * $g_c->seller_product->selling_price;
                  }
              }
          }

Hope I'm clear to you.

Answer 1

You could store it in cookies for guests then transfer the cookie data into table when they login.

---

I have not tested this but it should get the ball rolling

On the method where cart items are added:

$cart = $this->Cookie->read('Cart.items');
if(!$this->Auth->user()) {
    if(!empty($cart)) {
        $newItem = [
            'Products' => $product->id,
            'Sellers' => $seller->id,
            'SellerProducts' => $sellerProduct->id,
            'quantity' => $quantity
        ];
        $newCart = array_merge($cookie, [$newItem]);
        $this->Cookie->write('Cart', ['items' => $newCart]);
    }else{
        $this->Cookie->write('Cart', [
            'items' => [
                'products' => $product->id,
                'sellers' => $seller->id,
                'seller_products' => $sellerProduct->id,
                'quantity' => $quantity
            ]
        ]);

    }

}else{
    $item = $this->Cart->newEntity();
    if(!empty($cart)) {
        foreach($cart as $items) {
            $data = [
                'user_id' => $this->Auth->user('id'),
                'product_id' => $items['Products'],
                'seller_id' => $items['Sellers'],
                'seller_product_id' => $items['SellerProducts'],
                'quantity' => $items['quantity']
            ];
            $item = $this->Cart->patchEntity($item, $data);
            $this->Cart->save($item);
        }
        $this->Cookie->delete('Cart.items');
    }
}

on CartController view method

$cart = $this->Cookie->read('Cart');    
$entities = [];

if(!$this->Auth->user() && !empty($cart) {
    $i = 0;
    foreach($cart['items'] as  $items) {
        foreach($items as $model => $id) {
            if($model == 'quantity') {
                $quantity = $id;
                continue;
            }
            $this->loadModel($model);
            $entity = $this->$model->get($id, ['contain' => []]);
            $entities[$i][] = $entity;
            $entities[$i]['quantity'] = $quantity;
        }
        $i++;
    }
    $this->set('items', $entities);
}

On the view.ctp for CartController

if(!empty($items)) {
    foreach($items as $item) {
        foreach($item as $entity) {
            echo '<div><?=$entity->name</div>';
            echo '<div><?=$entity->quantity</div>';
        }
    }
}