Comments on: Dynamic Models in CakePHP 1.2

By: Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:43:35 +0000

Btw: upon further research, CakePHP’s validation is within its own class. I’m still on the fence as to whether applying a validation object to a dynamic model makes sense. If you’re building business logic, it makes sense to define a proper model and contain it there.

By: Chris Hartjes

Chris Hartjes — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:47:05 +0000

@anonymous

There’s nothing wrong with “implicit logic” as long as you KNOW that it is being used. I’ve used both Rails and Django, and while I prefer Python and Django over Ruby and Rails, that isn’t the point. Both Rails and Django use implicit logic as part of the framework. Otherwise, what would be the point?

By: Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:42:41 +0000

I for one welcome our new dynamic model overlords. I think it’s a good move and can save some time early on when your just trying to get some of the initial view work together. Although this strengthens my opinion that validation should be moved to its own class. Then you could validate models by defining a validation subclass and applying it to a dynamic model.

By: rafaelbandeira3

rafaelbandeira3 — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:19:21 +0000

Although that’s a undocumented one, it’s not that new…
But you warned it well, it may be a real headache when you’re mispelling model names.
cheers

By: derek martin

derek martin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:15:27 +0000

Handy, yes, but performance impact?
Does it do a structure query every time you use that model?
I wonder the same thing about Zend DB.
By contrast, Propel and others keep static “map” filez, outlining the structure.
Perhaps cake dynamically creates & caches map files?

By: anupom

anupom — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:53:17 +0000

I felt the same when I first discovered this feature. Though at first I thought it’s a bug I dint write the model class and for some weird reason Cake was not throwing any error on my face! But soon after digging some more into the Cake core, I realized now we can have dynamic models – models that are not physically there! In some cases it may simply stuffs, but I felt like, it may encourage fat controller – thin model ? People may start writing codes in controllers that are best housed in models. Just my thoughts anyway.

By: Daniel Hofstetter

Daniel Hofstetter — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:10:26 +0000

What’s the benefit of this feature? Ok, I don’t have to create a file, and else? On the other hand I no longer have a representation of my design at the model level if I use this feature…

By: Abhimanyu

Abhimanyu — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:01:52 +0000

That’s surely is a piece of Cake. Infact I’ve come across this before while I was playing with plugins.
I pr()’ed a plugin model, and found its name as ‘AppModel’ – I had no idea at that time

By: Richard@Home

Richard@Home — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:25:13 +0000

I spotted this a couple of days ago and assumed it had always worked like that!

By: Amit Badkas

Amit Badkas — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:43:49 +0000

This has existed for some time now… I discovered it accidentally as well, while investigating the error saying table not found rather than model not found!