One association property name is capitalized (cake 4)

1

I have several associations on a table. When I query with containment one of them shows up with a capitalized property name and the data is coming in as an array, not an entity.

I’ve tried specifically setting its property but it remains capitalized.

Screenshot of table associations

Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.18.35 PM
Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.18.35 PM1118×1286 147 KB

The query

Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.54.05 PM
Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.54.05 PM996×416 36.1 KB

debug showing that the association has a lowercase property set

last line is the property setting:

Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.11.31 PM
Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.11.31 PM1146×1008 130 KB

samples of the query result

associated data as expected:

Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.33.06 PM
Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.33.06 PM958×532 22.7 KB

associated data in an unexpected form

Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.33.30 PM
Screen Shot 2020-07-13 at 4.33.30 PM1024×806 39.9 KB

I can’t find anything in the entity or elsewhere in the table that is any different than any other table setup. But this one property remains capitalized and in array form.

I can accommodate the detail in code, but the behavior is not normal and I’d prefer not to have chaos cascade through my system…

Any suggestions about where to look?

2

Have you confirmed that it’s actually using your Tenants table and Tenant entity class?

3

That’s what it feels like. But I’m at a loss about where else to look.

The association seems to show the correct class name. The table exists and appears to be named properly. Same for the Entity…

And I have other associations to this table that are working as expected.

And I have confirmed that the TenantsTable does initialize before the query runs. So that seems like some degree of assurance.

4

The only thing I notice is that you’re using a non-standard naming structure for that association, Tenant instead of Tenants. So that’s why I thought of the classes. Is there a reason for that difference? The association should end up being called tenant even if you use Tenants as the association, I believe.

5

yes. I typically change the association names to match my intended use of the data rather than the defaults. It helps me keep my thinking straight. In this case an Item only has one Tenant so I name it singular.

I often change alias names in other ways to make the property more descriptive of my use in a specific situation. So this is not unusual code for me.

6

In the case of hasOne or belongsTo associations, though, Cake already knows there’s only going to be one, so it uses singular for the property name, even though it’s a plural in the association name. For me, it’s always easier to consistently use the plural name there, because there’s zero thought required about it when I’m doing my containment. I would just always contain Tenants, and no worry myself over whether it’s supposed to be Tenant in this particular situation.

7

Did you add the code of the query in afterwards, or was it there from the start and I missed it? Does it always work for you using lower case containment like that? I always use ->contain(['Tenants', 'Locations']), and I never have this sort of issue…

8

Ok!.

The plural association didn’t help. But capitalization of the containment seems to have done the trick.

Thanks. I post more if I learn more.

9

And, the tenant property is singular even when i make the association plural. Part of the nature of that association I guess.

10

Yep, Cake does what it can to make things make sense, so I generally let it do its thing and try to stay out of the way. I guess it’s got something in there somewhere to try when you give it lower case association names, and that’s maybe conflicting with something else in this case to get the wrong result. If you give it what it’s expecting, then it knows exactly what to do instead of having to muddle around in murkier waters.

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