Question

When I post to this controller, I get this back as the response: Fatal error: Call to a member function find() on a non-object in /app/Controller/AppController.php on line 26 which probably has to do with using $this->data() explicitly. I was using CakePHP save without form
per a recommendation in there, but since I’m not using a form to send the data (thus not using $this->request->data()), I’d like to know what the replacement is for $this->data() so I can get this working.

My database table is is submissions_favorites.

This is my SubmissionFavorite model:

class SubmissionFavorite extends AppModel {

    var $name = 'SubmissionFavorite';

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

}

This is AjaxController (what I’m posting to):

class AjaxController extends AppController {

    var $layout = 'ajax';  // uses an empty layout
    var $autoRender = false; // renders nothing by default
    var $uses = 'SubmissionFavorite';

    public function beforeFilter() {
        parent::beforeFilter();
        $this->Auth->loginRedirect = array('controller' => 'home', 'action' => 'index');
        $this->Auth->allow('addFavorite');
        $this->Auth->flashElement = 'flash_error';
    }

public function addFavorite() {
    $this->autoRender = false;

    $this->data['SubmissionFavorite']['user_id'] = $this->Session->read('Auth.User.id');
    $this->data['SubmissionFavorite']['submission_id'] = $_POST['id'];
    $this->data['SubmissionFavorite']['when'] = DboSource::expression('NOW()');

    $message = array('success' => 'success');

    $toReturn = json_encode($message);

    if ($this->RequestHandler->isAjax()) {
        if ($this->Session->read('Auth.User')) {
            $this->SubmissionFavorite->save($this->data);
            return $toReturn;
        } else {
            $login = array('login' => 'Please log in to add favorites');
            return json_encode($login);
        }
    }
}

Line 26 in my AppController is:

protected function getSubmissionCount() {
    $totalSubmissions = $this->Submission->find('count');
    return $totalSubmissions;
}

Which is totally unrelated to anything else. I didn’t even add anything to AppController when I wrote the new method within my AjaxController, so I’m not sure how it’s relevant (or why I’m even getting an error in that file).

Answer 1

First, following cake conventions, you should name your model SubmissionsFavorite (note the s between Submission and Favorite). This is because your table name is composed by 2 words, even representing a relationship between 2 other tables.

Also, you can’t do $this->Submission->… on AppController without telling cake whatever is “Submission”. Take a look at this link to see how to initialize Submission model and use it on AppController: Can I use one model inside of a different model in CakePHP?

Regards.