A Glimpse Inside CakePHP 1.2

One of my co-workers over at CDC (the mighty gwoo) gave a talk to the Orange Country PHP group about CakePHP 1.2 and some of the features that it contains. One of the more interesting items, well interesting to *me* anyway, is the addition of a convenience feature to “has and belongs to many” associations called “with”. Stolen directly from gwoo’s slides, here’s an example of it:

<?php
class Post extends AppModel {
var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
 ?Tag? => array(
 ?className? => ?Tag?,
 ?with? => ?TaggedPost?,
 )
 );

    function beforeSave() {
         if(!empty($this->data[?Tag?])) {
$this->TaggedPost->save($this->data[?Tag?]);
         }
    }
}
?>

So what is the “with” parameter really for? It’s nothing more than a convenience parameter that lets you apply a label to the name of your join table, so you don’t have to call it by it’s ugly name, in this case PostTags. Want to see it in action?

<?php
class PostsController extends AppController {
var $name = ?Posts?;
function tags() {
$this->set(?tags?, $this->Post->TaggedPost->findAll());
}
}
?>
 
<?php
foreach ($tags as $tag) :
echo $tag[?Post?][?title?];
echo $tag[?Tag?][?name?];
echo $tag[?TaggedPost?][?date?];
endforeach;
?>

It’s little touches like that, unseen by a lot of developers, that makes CakPHP just a little bit easier to use with each passing day. You can download gwoo’s slides here.

@TheKeyboard

A Glimpse Inside CakePHP 1.2

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