CakePHP retrieving HABTM data

Question

Quick setup: User hasAndBelongsToMany Course

      courses_users
__________________________
id | user_id | course_id |
 1 |       1 |         1 |
 2 |       1 |         3 |
 3 |       2 |         5 |

I need to load all the Courses for the User with users.id = 1

I tried this:

$this->User->id = $this->Auth->user('id');
$courses = $this->User->Courses->find('all');

But the code above retrieves all the courses instead of the associated to the user's ones

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '14 at 23:36

1

Since your relations are in tact you need to do the following:

$this->User->read(null, $id);
or
$this->User->find('first', array('conditions'=>array('id'=>1)));

And it should return also the courses for the user. It depends from your app, but I would use Containable behaviour to retrieve only the courses, but really depends how many relations you have with user's model.

Having Containable behaviour you should load only Courses relation like that:

$this->User->find('first', 
   array(
      'conditions'=>array('id'=>1), 
      'contain'=>array('Courses')));

answered Feb 08 '14 at 23:36

Nik Chankov

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Used recursive = 1; and the first line was enough. But could you post an example of how can I get the Containable behavior please? the documentation isn't clear enough. – Christopher Francisco Feb 09 '14 at 18:08
Containable behaviour is core behaviour included in the CakePHP. normally I just include it in the AppModel like: public $actsAs = array('Containable', ...); Then you can use it in find as easy as, specifying the relation table. It's good practice, since this way if you have a lot of relations, but you need only few of them, you can lightweight your queries with it. I think Containable behaviour doc, is clear enough: bit.ly/1gjCtRc – Nik Chankov Feb 09 '14 at 23:01

Fury · Answer 2 · 2014-02-09T10:37:19.107

0

 $course_ids = $this->CoursesUser->find('list', array('conditions'=>array('user_id'=>$this->Auth->user('id')), 'fields'=>'course_id'));

 $courses = $this->Course->find('all', array('conditions'=>array('id'=>$course_ids)));

edited Feb 09 '14 at 10:37

answered Feb 08 '14 at 22:25

Fury

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this won't work because courses doesn't have an user_id column. Since it is an HABTM relationship, the intermediate table has both foreign keys – Christopher Francisco Feb 08 '14 at 22:42
what do you mean name field? – Christopher Francisco Feb 08 '14 at 22:45
yeah, courses_users, and they have a HABTM relationship – Christopher Francisco Feb 08 '14 at 22:52
yes, I have both foreing keys (course_id and user_id), and they are associated properly (since I can insert a row without a problem). The issue is that I don't know how to retrieve them. I have updated the original post to describe better the issue – Christopher Francisco Feb 08 '14 at 22:57
this retrieved the intermediate table (the one I drew in the question above), now I need the courses. – Christopher Francisco Feb 08 '14 at 23:13

CakePHP retrieving HABTM data

2 Answers2