Want to insert into two tables using one form in ZF2 - php

Question

This might be a bit strange, but I'll try to explain. Basically I have a table containing users and a table containing customers. Users have permission to look into the data of only certain customers. So I figured I would make a separate table for user permissions, taking the user ID and the customer ID as foreign keys and having one row per customer/user permission.
When the admin adds a new user to the database using a class called UserForm (posted shortened below for reference), which uses Zend\Form, I want to also display all the customers next to the form as buttons that can be selected to be added as permissions. Now, I thought I would do that by having a JavaScript array that appends or removes the customer IDs if they're selected/deselected, then passing that array to the form as a hidden value and finally looping through the array inserting a row into the permissions table for each customer ID in the array, and taking the user ID that's been created as well. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it, but it's the best I could come up with.
Hope that's at least slightly understandable. So, I have one form, but I want to insert into two different tables. My question, I guess, is how do I pass the array to the form as a value? And how do I insert into not only the users table, but also the permissions table, when the saveUser() method is called (I'll post that below too). Also, is this a really weird way of doing it that I'm being unnecessarily difficult about? I'd love to hear if there's a much easier way.
My UserForm class:
namespace Admin\Form;
use Zend\Form\Form;
class UserForm extends Form
{
public function __construct($name = null)
{
parent::__construct('user');
$this->setAttribute('method', 'post');
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'userId',
'attributes' => array(
'type' => 'Hidden',
),
));
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'activated',
'attributes' => array(
'value' => 1,
'type' => 'Hidden',
),
));
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'username',
'attributes' => array(
'type' => 'text',
),
'options' => array(
'label' => 'Username:',
),
));
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'firstname',
'attributes' => array(
'type' => 'text',
),
'options' => array(
'label' => 'First name:',
),
));
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'lastname',
'attributes' => array(
'type' => 'text',
),
'options' => array(
'label' => 'Last name:',
),
));
$this->add(array(
'name' => 'submit',
'attributes' => array(
'type' => 'submit',
'value' => 'Go',
'id' => 'submitbutton',
),
));
}
}
My saveUser() method
public function saveUser(User $user)
{
$data = array(
'firstname' => $user->firstname,
'lastname' => $user->lastname,
'username' => $user->username,
'activated' => $user->activated,
);
$userId = (int)$user->userId;
if ($userId == 0) {
$this->tableGateway->insert($data);
} else {
if ($this->getUser($userId)) {
$this->tableGateway->update($data, array('userId' => $userId));
} else {
throw new \Exception('User ID does not exist');
}
}
}

Answer 1

One method is to use Form Fieldsets. A form can have multiple Fieldsets, and each Fieldset can be bound to a different entity.
These are useful when you have a one to one relationship between the entities
You would then create teo entities, for example a User entity (as you already have) and a new entity to represent your Permission.
You would create a Feildset for each and bind the objects to the fields sets. (UserFieldSet and PermissionFieldset for example)
checkout the section on Form Fieldsets:
http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/modules/zend.form.advanced-use-of-forms.html
If you have a one to many relationship, ie. One User can have Many Permissions, then you would be better off looking at form Collections:
http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/modules/zend.form.collections.html
there's an example of dynamically adding new rows for a one to many relationship too.