Yes, Big_Data is good idea for inserting bulk. But as AD7six note, it still use basic value quoting and does not return insert ids. And base on your ideas, i wrote small script to inserting bulk in a single query, using default CakePHP quoting and returning ids of inserted records.
$count = count($records);
$dbSource = $this->getDataSource();
$table = $dbSource->fullTableName($this->table);
$fields = $dbSource->prepareFields($this, array('fields' => array_keys($records[0])));
$values = array();
foreach ($records as $index => $record) {
if (!is_array($record) || !$record) {
return null;
}
foreach ($record as $column => $value) {
$values[$index][$column] = $dbSource->value($value, $this->getColumnType($column));
}
$values[$index] = '(' . implode(',', $values[$index]) . ')';
}
$query = 'INSERT INTO %s (%s) VALUES %s;';
$query = sprintf($query, $table, implode(',', $fields), implode(',', $values));
if (!$dbSource->execute($query)) {
return false;
}
$lastInsertId = $dbSource->getConnection()->lastInsertId();
$insertIds = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {
$insertIds[] = $lastInsertId + $i;
}
return $insertIds;