Question

I have a table called custom_carts and I have a table called custom_cart_items.

custom_cart_items has a foreign key called custom_cart_id that is set to custom_cart.id

According to the Cake Manual, when you call Model->delete() the first param is the id of the entry you want to delete and the second param is whether or not to cascade delete the dependent entries.

So when I call $this->CustomCart->delete(7,true) I get this error:

SQL Error: 1451: Cannot delete or
update a parent row: a foreign key
constraint fails
(`krake`.`custom_cart_items`,
CONSTRAINT `custom_cart_items_ibfk_1`
FOREIGN KEY (`custom_cart_id`)
REFERENCES `custom_carts` (`id`))

Here is the query:

DELETE `CustomCart` 
FROM `custom_carts` AS `CustomCart` 
LEFT JOIN `users` AS `User` 
ON (`CustomCart`.`user_id` = `User`.`id`)  
WHERE `CustomCart`.`id` = 25 

Shouldn’t it cascade and dlete the other entry too?

So why am I getting an error?

Answer 1

You must set the dependent parameter to true in the model with the hasmany relationship in order to enable cascading deletion.

Your model would look something like this:

class CustomCart extends AppModel {
         var $name = 'CustomCart';
         var $hasMany = array(
         'CustomCartItem' => array(
             'dependent'=> true
         )
);
}

Please see http://book.cakephp.org/view/82/hasMany