containable on hasMany relationship - php

Greetings,
I am trying to tear down query returned from find call using containable in CakePHP.
for example I have 2 models, User and Post. User hasMany Post.
Now when I am using containable on find call like so:
$User->id = 1;
$User->find('first', array(
'fields' => array('id'),
'contain' => array('Post')
))
It will not return the associated Post, instead will just return the id of the user.
It works however if I am trying to fetch the data the other way around.
i.e this works:
$Post->find('first', array(
'fields' => array('id', 'user_id'),
'conditions' => array('Post.user_id' => 1),
'contain' => array('User')
))
this doesn't:
$Post->find('first', array(
'fields' => array('id'),
'conditions' => array('Post.user_id' => 1),
'contain' => array('User')
))
From the returned values I then suppose that for the containable to works, the foreignKey has to be in the fields.
How then would I be able to filter out the User fields on the first call as the association of user is stored in Post.user_id?
Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank's.
-aw

As larryb82 said you'll need to define the relationship in both directions in order to retrieve Posts data from the User model
A user has many posts.
A post belongs to an user
CakePHP Doc example

Related

Complex ordering in CakePHP using Containable

I`m having a problem with the Containable behaviour.
I would like to know if there is any way to access the contained model attributes for operations like ordering.
For example, I have a model B which belongs to a Model A. I need to order objects of B using an attribute (integer) of A. It would be something like:
'contain' => array(
'A' => array(
'B' => array(
'order' => 'A.integer_attribute'
)
)
)
I know that there are easier ways to do this without Containable, but for reasons which are not worth being detailed here, I need to use it. This is an abstract example, in truth model A belongs to other models and this is just a small part of a deep containable tree.
I'd be very glad with any help!
EDIT
OK, I'll try my best to describe the situation without being unclear:
I have 4 models: User, Category, Field and UserField, and their relationships are as follows:
Category hasMany User
Category hasMany Field
User hasMany UserField
Field hasMany UserField
The opposite of these relations are all belongsTo. The purpose here is that the user belongs to a category, which has many fields that he needs to fill with his information (city, state etc). The information he fills is stored in the UserField table, as each information needs to have its field and the user who provided it.
That said, I need to build a screen which displays, for each category, a list of users and their information. So, I retrieve all the categories and its fields, so I can build a table for each category. Each field has an attribute "no_order", which is the number that indicates the order in which the field appears.
At the same time, I need all of each category's users to display them correctly in the tables. Finally, and there's the problem, I need to have UserField objects ordered by the "no_order" of their respective fields, for each user. So I ended up with something like:
$categories = $this->Category->find('all', array(
'order' => 'Category.name',
'contain' => array(
'Field',
'User' => array(
'UserField' => array(
'order' => 'Field.no_order'
)
)
)
));
But this doesn't work, since UserField cannot reach its respective Field's no_order from there.
I apologize if this wasn't clear enough, but for anyone who would spend a little while reading this, I would be VERY grateful for your help!
I am not shure for what do you want so, but I thing that should use joins of cakephp
$A = $this->A->find('all', array(
'joins' => array(
array(
'table' => 'B',
'alias' => 'B',
'type' => 'LEFT',
'conditions' => array(
'B.field_id = A.id'
)
)
),
'conditions' => array(
'B.field' => 'if_you_want_more_conditions'
),
'contain' => array(
'A' => array(
'B' => array(
'order' => 'A.integer_attribute'
)
)
),
'fields' => array('A.field','B.field'),
'recursive' => -1
));
I finally came up with a solution. I don't know how efficient it is, but there it goes:
'contain' => array(
'Field',
'User' => array(
'User.privilege = "Solicitante"'
'UserField' => array(
'order' => '(SELECT f.no_order FROM fields AS f WHERE UserField.field_id = f.id LIMIT 1)'
)
)
)
Having the raw query solved my problem. Hope it helps anybody who comes across a similar problem!

Cakephp loadModel bindmodel not working

I have hasMany Through table which is Chats table with Chat model and I'm using loadModel in User controller to load Chat model then ran below query to bindModel with Chat.user_id and User.id :
$this->loadModel('Chat');
$this->Chat->bindModel(array(
'belongsTo' => array(
'User' => array(
'foreignKey' => false,
'conditions' => array('Chat.user_id = User.id')
)
)
));
$lastChat = $this->Chat->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array(
'Chat.receiver_id' => $user_id['User']['id']
),
'order' => array('Chat.id DESC'),
'fields' => array(
'Chat.id',
'Chat.chat',
'Chat.user_id',
'Chat.receiver_id',
'Chat.read',
'Chat.created'
),
'group' => array('Chat.user_id')
));
I want to join those tables together but this does not seem to work in Cake way I tried with normal SQL query and it works fine.
What could be wrong here?
Have you tried setting the recursive property before the find? Eg:
$this->Chat->recursive = 3;
You may need to set this after $this->Chat->bindModel, but I am not sure if this will make a difference or not. You will also need to re-bind the User model before each find, if, for example, your find queries are run within a loop ...

CakePHP/Croogo: A veeery complex association

When I was working on my current project, I ran into a rather complex issue. I'll point out my problem much more detailed right now:
There are three Models: User, UsersExtendedField and UsersExtended.
UsersExtendedField contains custom fields that can be managed manually. All custom fields can be shown in the Users view as well, and be filled out of course. The values are then stored in UsersExtended, which has got two foreignKeys: user_id and field_id.
The relations look like this: User hasMany UsersExtendedField, UsersExtendedField hasMany UsersExtended, UsersExtended belongsTo User, UsersExtendedField.
The problem: When accessing the Users view, a form with user information input is shown. Any UsersExtendedFields are available as well, and since these hasMany UsersExtended, they've got plenty of UsersExtended values. But I want to reduce those to only the value(s) that belong to the User, whose view is shown at the moment. Here are my (desired) relations:
Croogo::hookBehavior('User', 'Crooboard.ExtendedUser', array(
'relationship' => array(
'hasMany' => array(
'UsersExtendedField' => array(
'className' => 'Crooboard.UsersExtendedField',
'foreignKey' => '',
'conditions' => array('status' => 1)
),
),
),
));
class UsersExtendedField extends AppModel {
var $name = 'UsersExtendedField';
var $displayField = 'fieldname';
var $hasMany = array(
'UsersExtended' => array(
'className' => 'Crooboard.UsersExtended',
'foreignKey' => 'field_id',
'conditions' => array(
'UsersExtended.user_id = User.id'
)
),
);
}
This is not the full code, these are the important parts. The problem starts right where I wrote 'UsersExtended.user_id = User.id'. Obviously, this won't work. But I do not have any idea how to access the User.id here. I also could not imagine a HABTM structure to solve this task. Do you have any idea how to get the semantics of this 'UsersExtended.user_id = User.id' to work?
Thank your very much for taking the time to read through this and helping me!
It sounds like you need to set up your HABTM relationship properly.
You already have the join table, UsersExtended, which contains your foreign keys.
Remove all previous relationships and set up HABTM in each of your User and UserExtendedField models.
The relationship code in your User model would look like this:
var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'UsersExtended' => array(
'className' => 'UsersExtended',
'joinTable' => 'UsersExtended', //assuming this is the
//name of that model's table
'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'field_id'
)
);
For more information check out the page in the cakephp book
In addition, this blog post helped me grasp the relationship concepts when I was learning cakephp.

Cakephp, Retrieve Data for HABTM Models using conditional find

There are 2 Models: Project & Category that are bind with HABTM relationship.
I would like to perform a search from projects controller that can do the following:
FIND all DISTINCT Project.scedule WHERE Category.slug != 'uncategorised'
Apologies for the syntax, I'm no sequel expert.
What I have managed to do is to retrieve all projects that do not belong to Category uncategorised into an array however I'm not sure as to how to search again the array result for DISTINCT Project.schedule values (needed to fill out a form drop down)
Before answer this question,again I suggest you to read the HABTM in cookbook of CAKEPHP carefully,then you can finish jobs like this yourself.
$this->Project->bindModel(array(
'hasOne' => array(
'CategorysProject',
'FilterCategory' => array(
'className' => 'Category',
'foreignKey' => false,
'conditions' => array('FilterCategory.id = CategorysProject.category_id')
))));
$this->Project->find('all', array(
'fields' => array(DISTINCT (Project.scedule)),
'conditions'=>array('FilterCategory.slug !='=>'uncategorised')
));

How can I find all records for a model without doing a long list of "OR" conditions?

I'm having trouble composing a CakePHP find() which returns the records I'm looking for.
My associations go like this:
User ->(has many)-> Friends ,
User ->(has many)-> Posts
I'm trying to display a list of all a user's friends recent posts, in other words, list every post that was created by a friend of the current user logged in.
The only way I can think of doing this is by putting all the user's friends' user_ids in a big array, and then looping through each one, so that the find() call would look something like:
$posts = $this->Post->find('all',array(
'conditions' => array(
'Post.user_id' => array(
'OR' => array(
$user_id_array[0],$user_id_array[1],$user_id_array[2] # .. etc
)
)
)
));
I get the impression this isn't the best way of doing things as if that user is popular that's a lot of OR conditions. Can anyone suggest a better alternative?
To clarify, here is a simplified version of my database:
"Users" table
id
username
etc
"Friends" table
id
user_id
friend_id
etc
"Posts" table
id
user_id
etc
After reviewing what you have rewritten, I think I understand what you are doing. Your current structure will not work. There is no reference in POSTS to friends. So based on the schema you have posted, friends CANNOT add any POSTS. I think what you are trying to do is reference a friend as one of the other users. Meaning, A users FRIEND is actually just another USER in the USERS table. This is a self referential HABTM relationship. So here is what I would propose:
1- First, make sure you have the HABTM table created in the DB:
-- MySQL CREATE TABLE users_users ( user_id char(36) NOT NULL,
friend_id char(36) NOT NULL );
2- Establish the relationships in the User model.
var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'friend' => array('className' => 'User',
'joinTable' => 'users_users',
'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'friend_id',
'unique' => true,
),
);
var $hasMany = array(
'Post' => array(
'className' => 'Post',
'foreignKey' => 'user_id'
),
);
3- use the scaffolding to insert a few records, linking friends and adding posts.
4- Add the view record function to the Users controller:
function get_user($id)
{
$posts = $this->User->find('first', array(
'conditions' => array('User.id' => $id),
'recursive' => '2'
));
pr($posts);
}
5- Now you can query the User table using recursive to pull the records using the following command:
http://test/users/get_user/USER_ID
6- Your output will show all of the records (recursively) including the friends and their posts in the returned data tree when you pr($posts)
I know this is a long post, but I think it will provide the best solution for what you are trying to do. The power of CakePHP is incredible. It's the learning curve that kills us.
Happy Coding!
If Post.user_id points to Friend.id (which wouldn't follow the convention btw) then it would be
$posts = $this->Post->find('all',array(
'conditions' => array(
'Post.user_id' => $user_id_array
)
);
which would result in .. WHERE Post.user_id IN (1, 2, 3) ..
Depending on your setup, it might be quicker to run two queries rather than trying to chain them together via the Cake stuff. I'd recommend adding something like getFriendsPosts() in the Users model.
<?php
class UserModel extends AppModel {
// ... stuff
function getFriendsPosts( $user_id )
{
$friends = $this->find( ... parameters to get user IDs of all friends );
// flatten the array or tweak your params so they fit the conditions parameter. Check out the Set class in CakePHP
$posts = $this->find( 'all', array( 'conditions' => array( 'User.id' => $friends ) ) );
return $posts;
}
}
?>
Then to call it, in the controller just do
$friends = $this->User->getFriendsPosts( $this->Auth->User('id') );
HTH,
Travis
Isn't CakePHP already generating the efficient code of:
SELECT * from Posts WHERE user_id IN (id1, id2 ...)
if not, you can do
$conditions='NULL';
foreach($user_id_array as $id) $conditions.=", $id";
$posts = $this->Posts->find('all', array(
'conditions' => "Post.user_id IN ($conditions)",
));
If your models are properly associated, Cake will automatically retrieve related model records. So, when you search for a specific user, Cake will automatically retrieve related friends, and related posts of these friends. All you need to do is set the recursion level high enough.
$user = $this->User->find('first', array('conditions' => array('User.id' => $id), 'recursive' => 2));
debug($user);
// gives something like:
array(
User => array()
Friend => array(
0 => array(
...
Post => array()
),
1 => array(
...
Post => array()
)
)
)
All you need to do is extract the posts from the user's friends, which is as easy as:
$postsOfFriends = Set::extract('/Friend/Post/.', $user);

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