Question

I am not sure how to proceed for my database schema and for my model associations, any help will be appreciated!!!

Okei, here it goes;

Model 1 : Post
(id, title, category_id, tag_id, body, created, modified)
Model 2 : Category
(id, title, description, created, modified)
Model 3 : Tag
(id, title, description, created, modified)

Mu problem is how to “build” the database table to allow for multiple tags and categories, with associations.

Example: If Post 1 belongsTo category_id = 1, and hasMany Tag, tag_id: 1, 3, 8, 99
Example2: If Post 2 belongTo category_id = 1,5 and hasMany Tag, tag_id: 1, 8, 43

So basicly, I am not sure what schema to go with and the best practice to allow for multiple associations.

Any suggestions??

Thanks!
-Tom

Answer 1

The easiest way to implement this is to use a lookup or join table. Cake uses a so-called “Has And Belongs To Many” (HABTM) relationship for these cases, which is a “many to many” relationship type.

Have a look at the manual entry for HABTM to deal with this kind of scenario. The manual mentions a comparable setup you’re aiming for.

In your case you would have posts and tags tables, which are joined by a lookup table called posts_tags containing post_id and tag_id columns. If you define the HABTM relation correctly in your Post Model, Cake will know how to use the three tables correctly when saving, finding and updating data.