Question

I have two tables – users and stores.
there is a third table – stores_users that should manage the relations (HABTM).

However, a store have a user_id column within it that refers to the owner of the store, the person who created the store record (belongsTo).
This user can grant management privileges to other users..

Should i expect problems because of this relations?

Answer 1

This shouldn’t be a problem. You can give aliases to your associations as such

class Store extends AppModel {

    public $belongsTo = array(
        'Creator' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
        ),
    );

    public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
        'Manager' => array(
            'className' => 'User',
            'joinTable' => 'stores_users',
            'foreignKey' => 'store_id',
            'associationForeignKey' => 'user_id',
         ),
    );

}

Now find operations on Store will return data like

array(
    [Store] => array(...)
    [Creator] => array(...)
    [Manager] => array(
        0 => array(...)
        1 => array(...)
    )
)