Question

So I wrote a flag feature for flagging comments, and I’m checking in my controller to see if the user has already flagged a particular comment. The problem is, I think this can be done in the Model.

The function is:

private function userAlreadyFlagged($userId, $commentId) {
    $userAlreadyFlagged = $this->CommentsFlag->find('count', array(
        'conditions' => array('CommentsFlag.comment_id' => $commentId, 'CommentsFlag.user_id' => $userId)
            ));

    if ($userAlreadyFlagged > 0) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

Then I have another function also within the controller called flagComment

if (!$this->userAlreadyFlagged($userId, $commentId)) {
    if ($this->CommentsFlag->save($this->request->data)) {
        $message = array('response' => 'success');
    }
} else {
    $message = array('response' => 'alreadyFlagged');
}​

My model for the CommentsFlag current links my users table to it:

var $name = 'CommentsFlag';
var $belongsTo = array(
    'User' => array(
        'className' => 'User'
    )
);

So I’m wondering how I can start doing stuff like this in the model from now on, because I have a lot of code like this that would be better suited for the Model.

Answer 1

It is a good practice to have fat-models. What problem are you facing in moving the above functions to model?

Copy those functions into your model (CommentsFlag) and replace all $this->CommentsFlag->find(... with $this->find(

Consequently, to call above functions from your model, you can use:

$this->CommentsFlag->userAlreadyFlagged() if called from CommentsFlag’s controller

or
$this->User->CommentsFlag->userAlreadyFlagged() if called from User’s controller.