Comments on: Key/value tables and how to use them in CakePHP 1.3

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:51:42 +0000

The above works perfectly for adding, but doesn’t quite work with editing. Here’s my attempt:

Form->input(‘ContentDetail.0.id’);
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.0.website’, array(‘value’=>$this->data['ContentDetail'][0]['value']));
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.1.id’);
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.1.contact_email’, array(‘value’=>$this->data['ContentDetail'][1]['value']));
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.2.id’);
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.2.contact_phone’, array(‘value’=>$this->data['ContentDetail'][2]['value']));
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.3.id’);
echo $this->Form->input(‘ContentDetail.3.address’, array(‘type’=>’textarea’, ‘value’=>$this->data['ContentDetail'][3]['value']));
?>

But it doesn’t feel very cakey?

ContentDetail is my `UserDetail` table.

This does appear to be work, but again, I don’t think it’s the best approach.

Have I missed something glaringly obvious? Thanks.

By: teknoid

teknoid — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:38:09 +0000

@chris

There is hardly a simple answer for this, but my recommendation would be to create a view (or a cache of sorts)… which would allow you to query the needed data.

As mentioned above, EAV or key/value system is not the best approach for intensive read operations, but very flexible for storage.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:58:48 +0000

I’ve been struggling with this very problem, for a realty website. It would be great if the admin could add new property fields, but of course they’d have to be searched…. I like this technique and plan on using it for site settings, but what other ways are there (that hopefully wouldn’t hurt search capabilities)?

As always tho, excellent article and topic, Please sir, can’t I some more?

By: teknoid

teknoid — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:42:44 +0000

@vela

Thanks. Good to hear.

By: vela

vela — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:24:49 +0000

whenever I open this blog to look for some decision, I see you just have posted an article about my problem :)))
Thanks! :)

By: gabrielr

gabrielr — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:49:51 +0000

Thanks for the answer, I try it …

By: teknoid

teknoid — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:16:48 +0000

@gabrielr

You need to ensure that you are passing an ID with each record you are editing. Only then an update will be triggered.

I would love to explain in more detail, but that would really take a while.

(I promise to do a follow-up very soon, which will show how to edit existing records for this scenario).

By: gabrielr

gabrielr — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:31:37 +0000

Hi, nice article. But I have a question and I Hope, you help me.

In the case create new record, there is no problem with de method saveAll() and the example, but what happend when I try to edit that records using saveAll(), cakephp Inserts new records in the Deteail’s Table, not Update that, What Im doing wrong?

By: teknoid

teknoid — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:09:10 +0000

@will

Thanks for sharing the link.

By: will

will — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:19:40 +0000

Hello all,

I used Felix solution for this earlier this year:
http://debuggable.com/posts/unlimited-model-fields-expandable-behavior:48428c2e-9a88-47ec-ae8e-77a64834cda3

Its pretty handy, but i agree with above comments about reporting / querying etc. It makes that stuff so much more complicated, you only want to do it for specific usages.

Eg, when something isn’t going to have to be searched by one of the expanded fields.

Still, handy to have in the toolkit.

Will