Question

I have a table called user_relationship. which has two foreign keys refering back to the User table to map that they are friends.

CREATE TABLE `user_relationships` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `status` varchar(255) default 'pending',
  `time` datetime default NULL,
  `user_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `friend_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),
  KEY `fk_user_relationships_users1` (`user_id`),
  KEY `fk_user_relationships_users2` (`friend_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

when i try to bake it naturally doesnt understand that the friend_id has to refer to User module. i wanna manual edit the code but o have some problem understanding what parts to edit in the following

var $belongsTo = array(
    'User' => array(
        'className' => 'User',
        'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    ),
    'Friend' => array(
        'className' => 'Friend',
        'foreignKey' => 'friend_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    )
);

In this part of the code i wanna refer the friend_id to the User Table

    'Friend' => array(
        'className' => 'Friend',
        'foreignKey' => 'friend_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    )

i tried doing this.. do i need to change anything else ?

    'Friend' => array(
        'className' => 'Friend',
        'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    )

Answer 1

How about this?

class UserRelationship {

    var $belongsTo = array(
        'User' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'foreignKey' => 'user_id'
        ),
        'Friend' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'foreignKey' => 'friend_id'
        )
    );

}

class User {

    var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
        'Friend' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'joinTable' => 'user_relationships',
            'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
            'associationForeignKey' => 'friend_id',
            'with' => 'UserRelationship'
         )
    );

}

---

Associations can be seen from different points of view:

User        <-    Relationship    ->     User
 |                     |                  |
 hasMany           belongsTo              |
 Relationship  <-  User (user_id)        hasMany
 |                 User (friend_id)  ->  Relationship
 |                                        |
 HABTM                                   HABTM
 User       <---------------------->     User

Your “physical” layout, i.e. database schema, is User -> Relationship -> User. Your real desired relationship is a User -> User relationship though. Technically that translates into a User hasAndBelongsToMany User association (also called many-to-many). Since it uses three models, a many-to-many association can be broken down into:

• User hasMany Relationship/Relationship belongsTo User
• Relationship belongsTo User/User hasMany Relationship

You don’t need the hasAndBelongsToMany association, but it’s what you actually want. You don’t really need the Relationship model at all, since it’s just a helper model to connect the two Users, but if you do want to specify its associations as well, it has two belongsTo associations.