Cakephp profile view looking for the wrong controller - php

Question

I have a function that is used to edit a previously existing userprofile here is the controller
class PeoplesController extends AppController
{
public $name = "peoples";
public $helpers = array('Html', 'form', 'Js');
public $components = array('RequestHandler');
public function viewPerson($id = NULL) {
$this->set('person', $this->people->read(NULL, $id));
}
public function editPerson($id = NULL)
{
if(empty($this->data)) {
$this->data = $this->people->read(NULL, $id);
}
else {
if($this->people->save($this->data)) {
$this->Session-setFlash('The profile has been updated');
$this->redirect(array('action'=>'viewPerson', $id));
}
}
}
}
the view outputs a form prepopulated with the previous data
<h2>Edit Profile</h2>
<?php
echo $this->Form->create('people', array('action'=>'edit'));
echo $this->Form->input('firstName');
echo $this->Form->input('secondName');
echo $this->Form->input('addressOne');
echo $this->Form->input('addressTwo');
echo $this->Form->input('city');
echo $this->Form->input('county');
echo $this->Form->input('country');
echo $this->Form->input('postCode', array(
'label' => 'Zip Code',
));
echo $this->Form->input('dob', array(
'label' => 'Date of birth',
'dateFormat' => 'DMY',
'minYear' => date('Y') - 70,
'maxYear' => date('Y') - 18,
));
echo $this->Form->input('homePhone');
echo $this->Form->input('mobilePhone');
echo $this->Form->input('email', array(
'type' => 'email'
));
$goptions = array(1 => 'Male', 2 => 'Female');
$gattributes = array('legend' => false);
echo $this->Form->radio('gender',
$goptions, $gattributes
);
echo $this->Form->input('weight');
echo $this->Form->input('height');
echo $this->Form->input('referedBy');
echo $this->Form->input('id', array('type'=>'hidden'));
echo $this->Form->end('Edit Profile');
?>
the view seems to work fine #
http://localhost/Cake/peoples/editPerson/2
but when I hit submit the url changes to
http://localhost/Cake/people/edit/2
So I changed
echo $this->Form->create('people', array('action'=>'edit'));
to
echo $this->Form->create('people', array('action'=>'editPerson'));
and I tried changing the first parameter of the create function to peoples but as this refers to the model and not the controller it should be people so i changed it back
the error i get is
Error: PeopleController could not be found.
so it is looking for the wrong controller but I am not sure where that seeking for the controller takes place.
I did use to have the controller class name uncapitalised but I follwed some advice on the conventions and capitalised it but the other previous functions I had still work fine so I dont think that is the problem
any ideas why it is changing the url and looking for the wrong controller?

Answer 1

The form action is being set to the edit action
Irrespective of the current url - the form action is overridden to be an explicit action:
echo $this->Form->create(
'people',
array('action'=>'edit') // <-
);
This will force the url to point at the action edit, or /people/edit/<current id>.
To prevent that, just don't specify the action, and the form will submit to the current url:
echo $this->Form->create(
'people'
);
To specify the form action url
Use the url key, not the action key which only changes the action:
echo $this->Form->create(
'people',
array(
'url'=>'/submit/here/please/' // <- or specify as an array
)
);
Avoid/correct confusing names
The convention regarding model and controller names is that models are singular, and controllers are plural:
Model |  Controller
Singular Plural
Person People
In the question this isn't the case, The model is a plural, and the controller is a confusing plural-plural (Peoples can actually be used, but it means many groups of people)
Don't define properties needlessly
In the question, there's also this:
class PeoplesController extends AppController
{
public $name = "peoples";
At best that doesn't do anything, but since the name property is defined as lower case and cake expects it to be CamelCased - that's likely to cause inconsistent behavior.
Best to follow conventions and name the controller People, the model Person and don't specify a name at all.
Don't repeat yourself
And follow conventions for a much easier ride.
The function naming is duplicates the word "person"
instead of:
public function viewPerson($id = NULL) {
(so.. the code uses person, people and peoples ?)
it's advisable to use:
public function view($id = NULL) {
After all, in the people controller - what other kind of thing is there to view (if the answer is many things, that's another thing to address)?
This makes urls simple (/peoples/view/1, instead of /peoples/viewPeople/1) as well as making the code itself easier to read (PeoplesController::view instead of PeoplesController::viewPerson).
If you don't want to change the names of the action methods, making them lower cased and underscored will at least mean the urls are consistently cased, instead of /lower_case_controller/camelCasedAction/args.