Saving hasMany associations with additional data

1

I have a CakePHP 5 app, with two tables - Titles and Series.

  • Series hasMany Titles,
  • Titles table has a series_id property
  • Titles also have series_number property

Imagine I have three titles, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The titles are already in the DB, and I want to make a new Series. So I send some data to the endpoint like this:

{
    "name": "The Lord of the Rings",
    "titles": [
        { "id": 1, "series_number": 1 },
        { "id": 2, "series_number": 2 },
        { "id": 3, "series_number": 3 }
    ]
}

I want the new Series to update the existing titles, with the new series_id and the series_number property. I can’t just use _ids for this cause I have additional data to save.

My save endpoint looks like this:

    /**
     * Add method
     *
     * @return void
     * @throws \Cake\Http\Exception\InternalErrorException
     */
    public function add(): void
    {
        $this->request->allowMethod(['post']);

        $series = $this->Series->newEntity($this->request->getData(), ['associated' => ['Titles']]);
        if ($this->Series->save($series)) {
            $series = $this->Series->get($series->id, contain: ['Titles']);
        } else {
            throw new InternalErrorException('Could not save the series. Please try again later.');
        }

        $this->set(compact('series'));
        $this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serialize', 'series');
    }

However, when I process this request instead of updating the titles with ids 1,2,3 it just tries to create new ones. If I try to edit an existing series with titles, this request does work as the titles association is already contained on the entity I guess? But if I try to create a new series or update one that has no titles, it simply makes new ones.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

2

Managed to get this working with an afterMarshal hook but it feels very hacky somehow? I would certainly be happy to find a more elegant solution!


    /**
     * @param \Cake\Event\EventInterface $event event
     * @param \Cake\Datasource\EntityInterface $entity event
     * @param \ArrayObject $data data
     * @param \ArrayObject $options options
     * @return void
     */
    public function afterMarshal(EventInterface $event, EntityInterface $entity, ArrayObject $data, ArrayObject $options): void
    {
        if (!empty($data['titles'])) {
            $titleIds = array_map(fn($title) => $title['id'], $data['titles']);
            $titles = $this->Titles->find()->where(['Titles.id IN' => $titleIds]);
            $titles = $this->Titles->patchEntities($titles, $data['titles']);
            $entity->titles = $titles;
        }
    }
3

You might try setting Titles.id to be an accessible field

public function add(): void
    {
        $this->request->allowMethod(['post']);
        $series = $this->Series->newEmptyEntity();
        $series = $this->Series->patchEntity($series, $this->request->getData(), [
            'associated' => [
                'Titles' => [
                    'accessibleFields' => [
                        // turns insert into update
                        'id' => true
                    ],
                    // This turns off validation but you can edit or create a custom validation rule 
                    // to suit the situation
                    'validate' => false,
                ],
            ],);

        if ($this->Series->save($series)) {
            $series = $this->Series->get($series->id, contain: ['Titles']);
        } else {
            throw new InternalErrorException('Could not save the series. Please try again later.');
        }

        $this->set(compact('series'));
        $this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serialize', 'series');
    }
4

That did the trick, thanks!

1 Like