CakePHP - One HABTM With Two Foreign Keys - php

Question

I've been trying to save two foreign keys to the same row of a join table with no success. My Client model has two HABTM association with both User and Group models, a user can have many clients and create clients under many different groups.
The UserClient join table looks like this:
+----+---------+----------+-----------+
| id | user_id | group_id | client_id |
+----+---------+----------+-----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
+----+---------+---------+------------+
Client model:
public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'User' => array(
'className' => 'User',
'joinTable' => 'UserClient',
'foreignKey' => 'client_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'user_id'
),
'Group' => array(
'className' => 'Group',
'joinTable' => 'UserClient',
'foreignKey' => 'client_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'group_id'
)
);
Client view:
<?php echo $this->Form->create('Client'); ?>
<fieldset>
<legend><?php echo __('Add Client'); ?></legend>
<?php
echo $this->Form->input('first_name');
echo $this->Form->input('last_name');
echo $this->Form->input('email');
echo $this->Form->input('phone');
echo $this->Form->input('Client', array('multiple'=> 'false', 'options' => $group_ids));
echo $this->Form->hidden('User', array('value' => $user_id));
?>
</fieldset>
<?php echo $this->Form->end(__('Submit')); ?>
This works to a point, however instead of saving user_id, group_id and client_id to the same row in UserClient table, it create two separate rows for each HABTM, user_id, client_id get saved to one row and group_id, client_id get saved to another.
Is there any way to define multiple associationForeignKey within the same HABTM association so user_id, group_id and client_id get saved to the same row when creating a new client?

Answer 1

When you have to store additional fields in a HABTM relation, it is sometimes easier to use a join model. In your case this would mean creating a model for your UserClient table and use hasMany relations instead of HABTM.
Then of course you'll have to manage the save manually, but you'll have much more control of what must be done. You can find a few words about this in the Cake documentation.