Why am I getting a “Not Associated” error even though the HABTM association is in place?

Question

I'm making some tournament scoring software for my bike polo league. The goal is to match up teams in such a way that everyone gets a chance to play every other team before repeat matches start.

In my Match Entity class, I have a function called createMatches that should find all teams and associated matches. There is a HABTM relationship between matches and teams, with a join table. This relationship works fine - I've selected teams (contain matches) and matches (contain teams) in several controller methods, saved associations through forms, and so on. But even so, in this Entity function, I get the error "Teams is not associated with Matches. Could this be caused by using Auto-Tables? ...." and so on. Can anyone tell me what's wrong?

Here's the method in question.

public function createMatches($tournamentId) {
    $team = TableRegistry::get('Teams', ['contain' => ['Matches']]);
        $teams = $team->find('all', ['conditions' =>
                ['tournament_id' => $tournamentId],
                    'contain' =>
            ['Matches' =>
                ['fields' =>
                    ['Matches.id']
             ]]]);
    return $teams;
}

Here's the init function from Match.php:

public function initialize(array $config)
{
    parent::initialize($config);

    $this->table('matches');
    $this->displayField('id');
    $this->primaryKey('id');

    $this->addBehavior('Timestamp');

    $this->belongsTo('Rounds', [
        'foreignKey' => 'round_id',
        'joinType' => 'INNER',
        'className' => 'SwissRounds.Rounds'
    ]);
    $this->belongsToMany('Teams', [
        'foreignKey' => 'match_id',
        'targetForeignKey' => 'team_id',
        'joinTable' => 'matches_teams',
        'className' => 'SwissRounds.Teams'
    ]);
}

Here's the init function from Team.php:

public function initialize(array $config)
{
    parent::initialize($config);

    $this->table('teams');
    $this->displayField('name');
    $this->primaryKey('id');

    $this->hasMany('Players', [
        'foreignKey' => 'team_id',
        'className' => 'SwissRounds.Players'
    ]);
    $this->belongsToMany('Matches', [
        'foreignKey' => 'team_id',
        'targetForeignKey' => 'match_id',
        'joinTable' => 'matches_teams',
        'className' => 'SwissRounds.Matches'
    ]);
}

I don't believe I've touched either of those functions - they were both generated by cake bake.

If the main problem relates to associations, it's a good idea to include the code that sets those association(s). — Dave, Nov 13 '16 at 17:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 14 '16 at 05:01

Error message is quite exact, but not descriptive. It says that Teams is not associated with Matches.

Well, I tested this with minimal setup, with only difference, that I did not have my tables inside plugins. And no errors detected. So, I am pretty sure that CakePHP cant find your table classes inside SwissRounds -plugin for some reason.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 21 '16 at 13:07

0

If your tables are in a SwissRounds plugin, you should use plugin notation for the associations:
$this->belongsToMany('SwissRounds.Teams', [... and
$this->belongsToMany('SwissRounds.Matches', [...

answered Nov 21 '16 at 13:07

Tolga

262
5
16

Why am I getting a “Not Associated” error even though the HABTM association is in place?

2 Answers2