I would like to have categories, and rankings for my content and users respectively, and I am not sure how to go about implementing this using CakePHP conventions?
Do I need to create a model?
That depends entirely on what these categories are supposed to do and not do. You could simply define a number of constants that you use for categorizing stuff. But, are categories...
subject to change? Do you want to add more eventually?
editable? May you want to change their names?
nested?
supposed to have more attributes than just their id? Names, descriptions?
If you answered Yes to any of the above, you'll want to store them as data in the database. This is independent of Cake, it's just sane data modeling. For Cake that means you'll need to create a model. The same goes for ratings.
So you'll have these tables:
users
hasMany ratings
categories
hasMany contents
contents
belongsTo categories
hasMany ratings
ratings
belongsTo users (polymorphic)
belongsTo contents (polymorphic)
You may want to separate user ratings and content ratings into two tables instead of using a combined polymorphic table (which just means that you have an extra column keeping track of whether a rating is for a user or for content).
i guess you are looking for something like this IF you dont want to use a model:
http://www.dereuromark.de/2010/06/24/static-enums-or-semihardcoded-attributes/
one possible approach to use "enums" for things that maybe only have 1-5 states.
if you have more than 10 or you want to be able to dynamically modify them (label, active/inactive) you will need a separate table and model relation.
Related
Heya I am novice web dev or actually I am still in education.
I got this situation Where I have 3 tables lets say : Students, Groups and a join table Student_group.
I put my data from Students in the student model and from groups I put its data in the Group Model so I can use it my application. But I store a date in the Student_group table because I need to know when a student changed from a group.
So my question is in which model do I put this date? Do i need to make a new model for the combined tables or do I need to add another attribute to the student model?
Thanks in advance ;D
That depends. Will the student be in many groups, or one?
If one (one to one relationship), you can decide where to put it. The column could be in either the Student table, or the Student_group. In this case, though, it may be advisable to flatten the data and simply add group columns in your Student table. You decide that as well - if it seems unnecessary to have a join for a one to one relationship (usually it is, not always), then flatten it. In either case, the data should stay in its respective model. That said, you should use the Student model if you handle it in the Student table.
If many (one to many relationship), I'd advise putting it in the Student_group table and leaving it in that model as well.
All in all, the model should be a direct reflection of the data it's representing. You could make some methods inside your Student model to make it easier to get the date, for example. However, I'd personally handle that date inside of the proper model, Student_group. As mentioned, the model should be a direct representation of the data. Again, though, there's nothing wrong with making things a bit easier by creating some methods that help out the developer.
I am making an e-commerce web application. The following are the things that I have planned.
products table to contain only few columns viz. id, name, code, SKU_no.
meta_information_products table containing columns viz. id, product_id [foreign key to products table], meta_title, meta_keywords, meta_description.
measurement_product table containing columns viz. id, product_id, width, height, weight, length
And similarly other tables in relation to products.
So my questions are:
Shall I create different Model for each of the points above and
then create the One-To-One relationship with products and
related table ? Or shall I create only one Model called Product and declare all the fields in just one table product.
If I create different models for Product, what should be the name of the method to be declared for creating the One-To-One relationship, and same with Product Model.
For example, consider the following: I have created two models called Product and MetaInformationProduct and I have created relationship with both the tables. Now how do I name the method for the following:
class Product extends Model {
...
public function methodName() {
$this->belongsTo('App\Product');
}
...
}
And for MetaInformationProduct:
class MetaInformationProduct extends Model {
...
public function methodName() {
$this->hasOne('App\Product');
}
...
}
I guess Stack Overflow is not the best place to ask questions of this kind, since your questions do not necessarily have right or wrong answers. There are multiple possible ways to go about constructing your app's data structure, and ultimately it all boils down to one's personal style of coding. So almost every developer would have an original 'right answer' to your questions.
Here's what I think. Why do you need three separate tables for all that data? As far as I can see, all three tables contain data related one-to-one to a single product. That means more complicated models and relations in development, and more resources and longer execution time in production. You could avoid all that if you create one products table with the following columns: id, code, SKU_no, name, title, description, width, height, length, weight. That will simplify your models significantly and reduce the number of queries trifold.
Additionally, I think I can spot a piece of bad practice in your table structure. In your current meta_information_products table you have a column named meta_keywords. I'm guessing that that field would contain multiple keywords of a product. This negates the benefit of relational database structure and will give you headaches down the road. Instead, I would create one products table as I described in the previous paragraph, then another table titled keywords, with the following columns: id, keyword. Lastly, you'd need a relational table titled keyword_product with the following columns: id, keyword_id, product_id. This gives you the ability for one product to have multiple keywords, and for one keyword to be assigned to multiple products. It's a well known 'Many to many' relation, and you can read more about it in the Laravel's official documentation.
In general, you should create one model for one database table, except for the relational tables. So in case you do as I would, you would then need two models: Product and Keyword. For its content, it's best that you refer to the link in the previous paragraph.
I'm creating a project management system which projects are assigned to users
What's the difference between creating a Model ProjectsUser and defining 2 $belongsTo relationship and defining HABTM relationships in both Project and User models? What would be the most correct way, though? And how do I save the data in the projects_users table?
From my experience, if you want to be able to save or delete rows only from the join table (the one with 2 IDs), then it is much more simple using three models associated through both a hasMany and a belongsTo association.
You can also retrieve data from the join table directly and do the queries you want much more easily
This is what CakePHP documentation says refering to HABTM and saving data:
However, in most cases it’s easier to make a model for the join table and setup hasMany, belongsTo associations as shown in example above instead of using HABTM association.
Here you can find more the full text:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/saving-your-data.html#what-to-do-when-habtm-becomes-complicated
I have used this method for a "reads" table (with post_id and user_id) as well as for subscriptions and similar kind of relationships.
The first way is called "hasAndBelongsToMany" [details here].
The second is called "hasMany through" [details here].
The second link relating to "hasMany through" has details and a lengthy explanation about when and why you would want to use it.
Not sure about the specifics of cakephp, but in general defining the relation model explicitly gives you more control over it, for instance if you wanted to do some validation or add callbacks on creation of this relationship.
I am using CakePHP and I have 2 tables, Documents and Download, on the Download table I have a field: Document_id, making the association with the model works fine, but sometimes i have in Document_id a field like this "2,10,12", How can I associat the tables?
You shouldn't store multiple ids in one field (unless you're intentionally denormalizing your database, but then you wouldn't be asking this question).
The "proper" way to do this is use a 3rd table called a linking table. e.g. "documents_downloads", to store the download_ids with matching document_ids.
Download hasMany DocumentDownload
DocumentDownload belongsTo Download & Document
Document hasMany DocumentDownload
The simplest way to implement this is using Cake's "hasMany through (The Join Model)"
See section of the Cakebook:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/associations-linking-models-together.html#hasmany-through-the-join-model
I am working on a little project where a user submits an article to MySQL, and then PHP send the post to the screen. So far so good.
Now i want to extend it to a "two level" post system, where people can comment on the articles.
The case is, i dont know how to do that.
The table i use for storing articles:
TABLE: posts
id user date avatar signature post
Should i make a new row named comments in the posts table, or should i place the comments in a seperate table? one for articles, one for comments?
All help is much appreciated.
Depends on how you use it on your website. You have to ask: "are my articles and comments essentially the same concept?" If yes, then use one table, if no, use two. On most websites articles work differently, can be categorized, editted etc., and usually need a different fields which would clutter the comments table... so in that case two tables are more reasonable. But if you conclude that on your website articles and comments are generally the same (but try to think future proof: wouldn't you need to add some article functionality in 2 months?) then you can think of articles also as of comments and have one table for them.
If you decide to merge things to one table, and you realize that you need another column to distinguish type of the post, and that some columns remain unused for some types, it is a clear warning signal you should have two tables!
This is a little subjective, but I would just set up a parent/child relationship on your posts table, make a parent_id column that is a foreign key for the id column in the same table. for extra credit, you can make it a nested set relationship which will allow you to pull the parent and all the children in one query