Question

I’m trying to implement this structure in my APP (i’ll use fantasy model names):

User hasMany Box
Box  hasMany Item
Item hasOne  Itemdata

"Item" have some metadata/info
"Itemdata" has 2 or 3 mediumblobs

This would be very easy if I want a db with 4 tables: users,boxes,items,itemdata.

In my db structure, due to amount of data, I’d like to split Itemdata in user-dependent tables, like this:

a) user1_itemdatas, user2_itemdatas ...

or at least,

b) myapp_user1.itemdatas, myapp_user2.itemdatas 
(where myapp_user* are different DB).

How can I change on the fly the table in model “Itemdatas” when finding/reading data belonging to certain users?

Should I choose for custom query?

Answer 1

Ok I found a way:

I created another database, in app/Config/database.php I added a new connection:

public $itemsdb = array(
    'datasource' => 'Database/Mysql',
    'persistent' => false,
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'login' => 'myuser',
    'password' => 'mypass',
    'database' => 'myapp_items',
    'prefix' => ''
);

Then in Itemdata model I put:

class Itemdata extends AppModel {
  public $useDbConfig = 'itemsdb';
  ..
}

Finally when performing search:

$user_id = $this->getUserByItemId($item_id);
$this->Itemdatas->useTable = 'itemdatas_user_'.$user_id;
$itemdata = $this->Itemdata->find('first',....);

An alternative can be to use user depending table prefix, instead of table name.