CakePHP how to add data from another field of a related model - php

Question

This is one of my first applications out of tutorials so I don't know how to express my issue well.
Well I have these 2 tables:
User ( id, code )
Hours ( id, user_id, created)
I want to know how I can add an entry to the Hours table using the user_code.
I tried to grab the data of the User table with the code value and then findBy and pass for the patchEntity but it did not work.

Answer 1

I don't have a whole lot of information to work with, but I'll give it a go.
I want to know how I can add an entry to the Hours table using the
user_code
You mention using patchEntity, so that's updating information that's already there. Assuming user_code is the 'code' column you're talking about there, first find the user by his code:
$users_tbl = TableRegistry::get('Users');
// find the user
$user = $users_tbl->findByCode($user_code)->first();
if ($user) {
// replace '$this->request->data() with whatever patch data you wanted
$users_tbl->patchEntity($user, $this->request->data(), [
'associated' => ['Hours']
]
if ($users_tbl->save($user)) {
// success!
} else {
// error!
}
} else {
// error!
}
It will also depend on how you have the data you passed in (where my '$this->request->data() is, or whatever your array might be) - it needs to match the right column names and be in the correct format listed here.
However, this is updating the data. Just adding the data, you can load the hours table and add a new entry with the user_id acquired from the user search:
$hours_tbl = TableRegistry::get('Hours');
$hours = $hours_tbl->newEntity([
'user_id' => $user->id // $user populated from same method earlier
]);
/* assumed 'id' was autoincrementing and 'created' was populated
through Timestamp behavior */
if ($hours_tbl->save($hours)) {
// yay!
} else {
// boo
}