Question

Im having a weird issue. My employee table has id->int(11) as primary key. It also has code->varchar(36), password and some other fields. This code and password are the two fields employees use to login to the system. I used cakePHP form helper to build the login page with Code field and Password field; and things were going fine.

Today when i tried to update the employee table’s another field using $this->Model->save, it inserted a new row instead of updating. Thats when i learned that i need to set code as my primary key. So i put $primaryKey = 'code' in my Employee model.

The moment i put that, the Code field in my login page disappeared, leaving only Password field. When I removed the $primaryKey = 'code', the Code field came back.

So it has something to do with setting code as primary key in the Model. Is there any work around this?

I need to be able to update the Employee rows using code and retain my Code field in the login page.

Answer 1

It sounds like code is essentially a username field. If code is not defined as the primary key in your database, it is best not to set the primaryKey Model property as code.

I think most would recommend to use the primary key field id to tell Cake which Employee record to update. But if you must use code, try the following:

Assuming your code field has a unique constraint in your database or is uniquely validated using Cake validation, you can use code to find the record you want to update. Once you have that record ($current in the below case), you can then get the primary key id, which is required so Model::save knows which record to update.

public function edit($code = null) {
    $current = $this->Employee->find('first', array(
        'conditions' => array(
            'Employee.code' => $code
        )
    ));
    $this->Employee->id = $current['Employee']['id'];

    if (!$this->Employee->exists()) {
        throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid employee'));
    }
    if ($this->request->is('post') || $this->request->is('put')) {
        if ($this->Employee->save($this->request->data)) {
            $this->Session->setFlash(__('The employee has been saved'));
            $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
        } else {
            $this->Session->setFlash(__('The employee could not be saved. Please, try again.'));
        }
    } else {
        $this->request->data = $current;
    }
}