Question

I was wondering if there is a widely accepted way to store a user’s preferences in a CakePHP application. For example, some ways I can think of are:

1. Having individual settings in the user model as fields.
2. Having a preferences table with a key and value field.
3. Having a preferences table with one entry per user and preferences as fields. (Similar to the first, I suppose)

Is there a way that might be better for an application that might change or expand (i.e. one that may account for preferences to be added or removed)?

Answer 1

You might want to look at the KeyvalueBehavior in CakeDC’s Utils plugin as a starting point.

Extract the plugin to Plugin/Utils/ and create a database table called preferences with the following fields: user_id, field, value

<?php
class Preference extends AppModel {

    $actsAs = array('Utils.Keyvalue');

}

You can then save and retrieve preferences like so (assuming User hasMany Preferences):

$this->User->Preference->saveSection($this->Auth->user('id'), array(
    'Preference' => array(
        'dob' => 'mm/dd/yyyy',
        'gender' => 'm|f|n',
        'url' => 'http://www.example.com',
    )
), 'Profile');

$this->User->Preference->getSection($this->Auth->user('id'), 'Profile');