Question

As part of a web application users can upload files of data, which generates a new table in a dedicated MySQL database to store the data in. They can then manipulate this data in various ways.

The next version of this app is being written in CakePHP, and at the moment I can’t figure out how to dynamically assign these tables at runtime.

I have the different database config’s set up and can create the tables on data upload just fine, but once this is completed I cannot access the new table from the controller as part of the record CRUD actions for the data manipulate.

I hoped that it would be along the lines of

function controllerAction(){ 
$this->uses[] = 'newTable'; 
$data = $this->newTable->find('all'); 

//use data 
}

But it returns the error

Undefined property:
ReportsController::$newTable

Fatal error: Call to a member function
find() on a non-object in
/app/controllers/reports_controller.php
on line 60

Can anyone help.

Answer 1

You need to call $this->loadModel('newTable') to initialize it properly. Cake needs to initialize $this->newTable properly, and call all the callbacks.

Of course, you don’t need $this->uses[] = 'newTable';, that doesn’t do anything except add another value to the $uses array.