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Three simple tables...

  1. Feedname (eg. News or Events) which are the names of RSS feeds.
  2. Posts that belong to a Feedname
  3. User, that owns all the posts

I want to use the Form helper to automatically give me a select box so that when I add a post I can select which Feedname to assign it to.

It seems like posts belong to both Feedname and User but I can't get the correct combination of belongsTo and hasMany in my model/ .php files. The select box for feedname is shown, but there is nothing in it. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

The tables look like this at the moment:

CREATE TABLE `feednames` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

CREATE TABLE `posts` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `title` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
  `body` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `user_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
  `feedname_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `foreign_key` (`user_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `username` varchar(255) CHARACTER SET latin1 NOT NULL,
  `password` char(40) CHARACTER SET latin1 NOT NULL,
  `group_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `modified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `username` (`username`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

edit - adding the model .php files ...

class Feedname extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'Feedname';

    var $hasMany = array(
        'Post' => array(
            'className' => 'Post',
            'foreignKey' => 'feedname_id',
            'dependent' => false
        )
    );
}

class Post extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'Post';

    var $belongsTo = array(
        'User' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'foreignKey' => 'user_id'
        ),
        'Feedname' => array(
            'foreignKey' => 'feedname_id'
        )
    );
}

class User extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'User';

    var $hasMany = array(
        'Post' => array(
            'className' => 'Post',
            'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
            'dependent' => false
        )
    );
}

edit - adding SQL dump ** ...

/posts/index.ctp:

SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM posts AS Post LEFT JOIN users AS User ON (Post.user_id = User.id) LEFT JOIN feednames AS Feedname ON (Post.feedname_id = Feedname.id) WHERE 1 = 1

SELECT Post.id, Post.title, Post.body, Post.created, Post.modified, Post.user_id, Post.feedname_id, User.id, User.username, User.password, User.group_id, User.created, User.modified, Feedname.id, Feedname.name, Feedname.created, Feedname.modified FROM posts AS Post LEFT JOIN users AS User ON (Post.user_id = User.id) LEFT JOIN feednames AS Feedname ON (Post.feedname_id = Feedname.id) WHERE 1 = 1 ORDER BY Post.created DESC LIMIT 10

Please note: /posts/add.ctp does not produce any SQL dump, so it's not getting the select box options from the database, this is what I'm trying to fix with proper model relationships.

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  • Can you add the model files also? did you use cake bake? Commented Sep 29, 2010 at 19:36
  • I did not use cake bake - I basically copied the exact code from the Blog tutorial from the cake Book, and added the Feednames controller/model/view. Please see edited question for model files. Commented Sep 29, 2010 at 22:11

2 Answers 2

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2

Do you have something like this in your controller methods (e.g. the admin_add / admin_edit functions)?

$feednames = $this->Feedname->find('list');
$this->set('feednames', $feednames);

Cake should then automatically populate the select list with these values. Or you can manually set the values with:

$form->input('feedname_id', array('options' => $feednames));
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4 Comments

I have similar in my FeednamesController, but not in PostsController. I thought the model .php files relationship vars were supposed to do this work rather than the controller.
If you want the data (a list of feednames) to show up in your posts view (e.g. admin_edit or admin_add), you need to find the data and send it to the view. If you use Cake Bake for your controller, it will generate something similar to what I posted above. Try it.
I started again, baked the models and controllers with the console, and found that I needed $feednames = $this->Post->Feedname->find('list'); in my controller. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)
Glad I could help.. if you include Feedname in $uses you can write $this->Feedname->find(...) and directly access any Feedname methods. But yes, without that you would need $this->Post->Feedname->find(...)
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So far I agree :

posts     > belongs to > users
posts     > belongs to > feednames
feednames > has many   > posts
users     > has many   > posts

Just checking, but, did you actually insert data into your tables? Else it would be only logical that your select field is empty. Also, what does the Sql dump say in debug mode?

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1 Comment

Yes, data is in the tables. The SQL dump is empty for the posts/add.ctp view - indicating that the Feednames info for the select box was not retrieved from database. I've edited the question to include the SQL from the posts/index.ctp.

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