Question

I need help constructing a CodeIgniter Datamapper ORM query that includes join fields.
I have a table of Merchants and a table of Vendors.
They have a many-to-one relationship, that is, many Merchants are part of a single Vendor.

Thus, my datebase tables, following the Datamapper ORM convention are:

merchants

vendors

merchants_vendors

Furthermore, in the merchants_vendors table, I have join fields ‘role’ and ‘admin’.
Obviously, this data must be placed in the join table, if it were placed in the Merchants table, I wouldn’t be able to define roles and administrators per Vendor.

Lastly, Merchants are related to Users by a one-to-one relationship.
Think of Merchants as just an extension of Users.

I’m attempting to create a PHP array from the data that follows this data structure, but I can’t seem to get the role and admin fields populating properly. I removed redundant columns for your simplicity:

[vendor] => Array
        (
            [id] => 1
            [name] => Vendor1
            [users] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [id] => 277
                            [username] => merchant1
                            [firstname] => Merchant1
                            [merchant] => Array
                                (
                                    [id] => 1
                                    [user_id] => 277
                                    [role] => Sales
                                    [admin] => 0
                                )

                        )

                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [id] => 282
                            [username] => merchant2
                            [firstname] => Merchant2
                            [merchant] => Array
                                (
                                    [id] => 2
                                    [user_id] => 282
                                    [role] => Software
                                    [admin] => 1
                                )

                        )

                )

        )

Here’s the code I’m using – Assuming we know the Vendor ID:

$v = new Vendor($id);
if($v->exists())
{
    $d['vendor'] = $v->to_array();
    $m = new Merchant();
    $m->where_related_vendor('id', $v->id)->get();
    if($m->exists())
    {
        foreach($m as $mK => $mV)
        {  
            $u = new User();
            $u->where_related_merchant('id', $mV->id)->get();
            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK] = $u->to_array();
            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK]['merchant'] = $mV->to_array();
        }
    }
}
$this->load->view('myview', $d);

This gets me as far as the above PHP data structure without the role and admin.
I am well aware of the include_join_fields() function – but I cannot seem to get it working. Specifically, I tried $m->vendor->include_join_fields(); Then tried to access the role/admin fields by $mV->vendor->join_role and $mV->vendor->join_admin – but that doesn’t work.

Your help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

The solution was to use include_join_fields() on the $mV object inside the forloop:

$v = new Vendor($id);
if($v->exists())
{
    $d['vendor'] = $v->to_array();
    $m = new Merchant();
    $m->where_related_vendor('id', $v->id)->get();
    if($m->exists())
    {
        foreach($m as $mK => $mV)
        {  
            $u = new User();
            $u->where_related_merchant('id', $mV->id)->get();

            $mV->vendor->where('id', $v->id)->include_join_fields();

            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK] = $u->to_array();
            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK]['merchant'] = $mV->to_array();
            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK]['merchant']['role'] = $mV->vendor->join_role;
            $d['vendor']['users'][$mK]['merchant']['admin'] = $mV->vendor->join_admin;
        }
    }
}
$this->load->view('myview', $d);

Ongoing discussion in the CodeIgniter forums.

I will post more information as it arrives.