deep association between models - php

Question

hi guys i am new to cakephp
now i'm facing a little big problem
here is the situation
i hava a shop that hasMany Catalogs which is related to many products each product has a category
i want to fetch them all just by getting the shop
i dont know how to do it
trying to use hasMAny gives me just the ids
instead is there any way to get shop inside it array of catalogs each catalog has Product's array which has one array of category
thank you

Answer 1

Ok, I'm on my computer now :).
In ShopModel:
class ShopModel extends AppModel {
public $hasMany = array(
'Catalog' => array(
// binding params here...
),
);
}
In CatalogModel:
class CatalogModel extends AppModel {
public $hasMany = array(
'Product' => array(
// binding params...
),
),
}
... and this goes on...
If you don't want to get excessive data in all actions, you should set in AppModel:
class AppModel extends Model {
public $recursive = -1;
}
In the controller action where you call the find function with associations:
$this->Shop->Behaviors->load('Containable');
$big_array = $this->Shop->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array(
//...
),
'contain' => array(
'Catalog' => array(
'Product' => array(
// etc, you get the point :)
),
),
),
));
It is also nice to declare the $belongsTo associations too, so you can access anything from anywhere, something like this:
$this->Catalog->Behaviors->load('Containable');
$big_array = $this->Catalog->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array(
//...
),
'contain' => array(
'Product' => array(
// ...
),
'Shop' => array(
// ...
),
),
));
EDIT
I see you have a Product->Category relation that i guess would be defined with $belongsTo. If you do a query like the one above, you will get a lot of duplicate queries (same category in many products). You can use $this->Category->find('list') but very often I find this inappropriate as it is returning only one field (I would be grateful if someone knows a way how can I get more fields with the list type). For this purpose, my workaround is making a custom function in the Category model like this:
class Category extends AppModel {
public function getSorted ($options = array()) {
$temp= $this->find('all', $options);
$output = array();
foreach ($temp[$this->alias] as $row) {
$output[$this->alias][$row['id']] = $row;
}
unset($temp);
return $output;
}
}
Then in the controller I would declare two arrays, the big one without category association and the category list one:
$this->loadModel('Category');
$this->set('categories', $this->Category->getSorted());
This way, I can get the needed category row by category id wherever i need it in the view.

Answer 2

Do not use CakePHP association they are not good handling complex relationships, you will later face problems with....Instead create all your join queries on the fly...I am giving you one example below:
Create one function inside Shop model and join catalog and product as shown below:
$options = array(
'conditions' => array('Product.id'=>9),
'joins' => array(
array(
'alias' => 'Catalog',
'table' => 'catalogs',
'type' => 'LEFT',
'conditions' => array(
'Catalog.product_id = Product.id',
),
),
array(
'alias' => 'Product',
'table' => 'products',
'type' => 'LEFT',
'conditions' => array(
'Shop.id = Product.shop_id',
),
)
),
'fields' => array('Product.*'),
'group' => array('Product.id')
);
$returnData = $this->find('all',$options);
This will make coding little easier and you can escape from associations!