CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cakephpcakephp-1.3
Rob Wilkerson
Rob Wilkerson

Reputation: 41236

Delete a belongsTo Association

There's surprisingly little information to be found about this and I guess I've never run into it before, but I'm in a situation where I have a model with a belongsTo relationship. The model is the key and when I delete a record, I need to ensure that its associated record is also deleted.

Specifically, I have a Building model that belongsTo an Address. When I delete the building, I need to be sure that the associated address is also deleted.

I can't flag the association as dependent, of course, so is a callback the best way to ensure that the address record gets deleted or is there a better way? This is one of those cases where I know I can do it with a callback, but at a visceral level, it seems like there should be a better way. I'm wondering whether that's the case.

Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2057

Answers (2)

Valentin Rapp
Valentin Rapp

Reputation: 472

In cakephp 3.x you can use the unlink method like described here:

http://api.cakephp.org/3.3/class-Cake.ORM.Association.HasMany.html#_unlink

This would set the foreign key field in the database to null

In your case it should be something like this everytime when you want to delete records from buildings so integrate it in your delete function. Of course it requires properly associations in the models.

$address = $this->Addresses->get('address_id'):
$building = $this->Buildings->find()->where(['building_id' => 'some_id'])->toArray();

if ($this->Addresses->association('Buildings')->unlink($address, $building)) { 
    $this->Flash->success(__('Success!'));
    return $this->redirect($this->referer());
} else {
    $this->Flash->error(__('Error.'));
    return $this->redirect($this->referer());
}

Upvotes: 1

pleasedontbelong
pleasedontbelong

Reputation: 20102

why not using Foreign Keys in the database and select on DELETE CASCADE and let the database do the work...

[Based on the comment] if you the Address is attached to other models that you dont want to delete, you can set those FK to ON DELETE RESTRICT and the building wont be deleted.

And if you need something more complex you can add the beforeDelete() callback in your model, there's an example in the doc

Good Luck

Upvotes: 1

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