Question

I’m trying to run through seeing if a user can signup for a course. I have 2 questions:

1. Am I going about this the right way?
2. My student::isSignedUpForCourse() function isn’t returning the proper course (it’s actually returning 2 courses). How can I send it the course that is being used in the course model where it is called (Course::CanSignupForCourse)?

Thanks!

// Course Model
public function isComplete() {
    $course = $this->read(null);

    if($course['Course']['completed'] != 0) {
            return true;
    }

    return false;
}

public function canSignupForCourse($studentId) {
    $this->Student->id = $studentId;

    if (!$this->Student->exists()) {
            throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid student'));
    }              

    $this->Student->isSignedUpForCourse();
    //this will ultimately be: 
    //if(! $this->Student->isSignedUpForCourse && $this->isApproved()) {
        // return
    }
}

// Course Controller:
public function signup($id = null) {
    $this->Course->id = $id;
    if (!$this->Course->exists()) {
            throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid course'));
    }              

    if($this->Course->canSignupForCourse($this->Auth->user('id'))) {
            // can signup
    }
}

// Student Model
public function isSignedUpForCourse() {
    print_r($this->read());
}

Answer 1

Inside your model you are referring to the model. You only need to refer to $this, not $this->Student.

public function canSignupForCourse($studentId) {
    $this->Student->id = $studentId;

should be

public function canSignupForCourse($studentId) {
    $this->id = $studentId;

UPDATE

Even worse, you cannot overload a Model with another model like that. You cannot call a model from inside another model without Instantiation of the model. You need to add this before referencing the Student Model:

App::uses(‘Student’, ‘Model’);
$student = new Student();
$student->id = $student_id;

However, the design of your functions should be updated. You probably should be passing the student id and the course id to $this->Student->isSignedUpForCourse();. The way you have it now makes the code difficult to read and understand. I would change the isSignedUpForCourse function to this:

public function isSignedUpForCourse($student_id = null, $course_id = null) {
    if (!$student_id or !$course_id) {
        return false;
    }
    // access the model to determine course/student
}

With out knowing the relationship between course/student (although I would assume it is HABTM), I cannot provide the proper course/student detection code. But I think you get the point.