Question

I have been able to use CakePHP’s saveAll method to simultaneously create ‘Members’ and enroll them in an ‘Event’ (creating the HABTM link record), which is awesome. For example, this code creates two new ‘Members’ and adds a record for each of them to the ‘EventsMember’ table, enrolling them ‘Event’ 10:

$data = array(
  '0' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10)
  ),
  '1' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10)
  )
);
$this->Member->saveAll($data);

However, the record in the ‘EventsMember’ table also has a field called ‘role’ that holds something like “Presenter” or “Host” or “Attendee” and I would like to save that data when I create the relationship. I tried this and it does not work (the ‘EventsMember’ ‘role’ field is always blank):

$data = array(
  '0' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10),
    'EventsMember' => array('role' => 'Host')
  ),
  '1' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10),
    'EventsMember' => array('role' => 'Attendee')
  )
);
$this->Member->saveAll($data);

I’m wondering if this is even possible, and if maybe I have to use some kind of callback like beforeSave or afterSave to get this done? I’ve read that there are some problems with these callbacks when using saveAll, so I’m looking for any tips on what would be the best practice here.

Thanks!

EDIT: I took Adam’s advice and made the following changes to my models:

// Event.php
var $hasMany = array('EventsMember');

// Member.php
var $hasMany = array('EventsMember');

// EventsMember.php
var $belongsTo = array('Event', 'Member');

Then in my controller, my code looked almost identical to my second example, except I called the saveAll() method from the EventsMember model, as described in the documentation:

$data = array(
  '0' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10),
    'EventsMember' => array('role' => 'Host')
  ),
  '1' => array(
    'Member' => array('email' => '[e-mail]'),
    'Event' => array('id' => 10),
    'EventsMember' => array('role' => 'Attendee')
  )
);
$this->EventsMember->saveAll($data);

The result was no Member or EventsMember records were saved at all. I tried triggering the save from the Member model ($this->Member->saveAll($data);) and this saved the Member records, but not the joining EventsMember records.

I tried removing the pre-existing HABTM associations, and it made no difference. The beforeSave method of the EventsMember model is getting triggered when I call $this->EventsMember->saveAll($data); but it looks like it won’t actually save anything.

I’m stymied.

UPDATE: It turns out that no records were created because the joining records were all being created with Event ids and Member ids of 0, which goes against a unique key I have on those two fields combined (that is, no Member can enroll in an Event twice).

Does this suggest that the join model saveAll functionality is not working as documented, since the Member record isn’t getting created (meaning there is no Member id to use in the joining record), and the existing Event id is not being passed to the joining EventsMember record either?

VERDICT: I changed the controller to loop on each record and attempt to $this->EventsMember->saveAll($data) for each index of the array, instead of passing the entire array at once. It worked, but was significantly slower than my first example (at the very top). Mind you, I am using transactions, so perhaps using the atomic => false; option would speed things up, while still allowing me to recover from any invalid records.

Bottom line, if you need to save extra data in join table records, you have to process them one at a time. If not, use the method at the top for the best performance.

Answer 1

You can use The Join Model in this case.