"Check" checkboxes if they have a record in reference table

Need Help
1

More fun converting a Cake 2.x app to Cake 4.x. I have a ‘Manage Roles’ option in my user management setup. When I click ‘Manage Roles’ for a user, I’m taken to admin_groups.php and I get an array of checkboxes read from my Groups table. This is the code from my UsersController that brings these in:

$this->set('groups', $this->Groups->find('list', [
        'keyfield' => 'id', 'valueField' => 'group_name',
        'order' => ['group_name ASC']
        ])
    );

I also contained my UserGroups table when looking up the user, thinking that would help.

$user = $this->Users->get($id, [
        'contain' => ['UserGroups'],
    ]);

Users, Groups, and UserGroups tables have the following associations:

Users hasMany UserGroups FK = user_id
UserGroups belongsTo Users FK = user_id
UserGroups belongsTo Groups FK = group_id
Groups hasMany Users FK = group_id

And here is the code from my admin_groups.php that displays the checkboxes and their labels.

<?= $this->Form->create($user) ?>
        <fieldset>
            <legend><?= __('Edit User Roles for ' . $user->full_name) ?></legend>
            <?php
                echo $this->Form->control("UserGroups.group_id", [
                    'type' => 'select', 
                    'multiple' => 'checkbox', 
                    'options' => $groups, 
                    'label' => '',
                ]);
            ?>
        </fieldset>
        <?= $this->Form->button(__('Submit')) ?>
        <?= $this->Form->end() ?>

I have no trouble displaying the checkboxes or selecting them and saving the result to the UserGroups table; however, I’m struggling with displaying the checkboxes as “checked” after they’ve been selected. The user’s group memberships are retrieved by calling getGroups in my UsersTable:

public function getGroups($user_id, $keys = true) 
{
    // Get the user's group memberships
    $groups = [];
    foreach($this->UserGroups->find('all', ['contain' => ['Groups']])->where (['user_id' => $user_id]) as $data) {
        $groups[$data->group->id] = $data->group->group_key;
    } 
    return ($keys) ? $groups : array_keys($groups);
}

In the old days, all it took was a modification to the request object to populate the checkboxes, like so:

$this->request->data['UserGroup']['group_id'] = $this->User->getGroups($id, false);

Obviously, that’s forbidden now, so I’m looking for the Cake 4 equivalent.

2

You can use the request’s withData() method which I believe will create a new request object with your added data included.

Or, I like to pull the data out of the request and work with it separately:

$postData = $this->request->getData();

Then the immutable request is not in my way.

3

So that’s close to what I’m after, but when the page loads, there isn’t any request data for me to extract yet (I think? Please correct me if I’m wrong). I need the selected boxes to be checked when I visit the page.

Now, when I do something like this, using getData() instead of withData():

$test = $this->request->getData('UserGroups.group_id', $this->Users->getGroups($user->id, false));

and I debug $test, I see the correct results: an array of group_id's assigned to the user.

[
 (int) 0 => (int) 33, 
 (int) 1 => (int) 31, 
 (int) 2 => (int) 24, 
 (int) 3 => (int) 21, 
 (int) 4 => (int) 20, 
 (int) 5 => (int) 2, 
 (int) 6 => (int) 1,
]

What’s eluding me is how to use that data to populate my checkboxes.

4

Aaaand I just figured it out! $this->set('test', $test) in my UsersController and then add this to my checkbox display:

'default' => $test,

Just tested it out and it works perfectly. Thanks for the nudge!