Why does patchentity overwrite values that are actually not set to null?

Need Help
1

Hi, how how can i tell patchentity to not set values to null if they are not set in $requestData.

eg:

  $accessibleFields = [
                'body' => true,
                'active' => true,
                'authdesc' => true,
                'auth_id' => true,
                'authowner' => true
            ];
            
                                
            $docs = $this->Types->Docs->patchEntity($docs, $requestData, [
                'accessibleFields' => [
                    docsimages' => true
                ],
                'associated' => [
                    Docsimages' => [
                        'accessibleFields' => $accessibleFields
                    ]
                ],
            ]);```  

$requestData looks like that:

debug($requestData);
[
‘docsimages’ => [
(int) 0 => [
‘id’ => ‘453’,
‘body’ => ‘12334’,
‘active’ => (int) 1,
],
(int) 1 => [
‘id’ => ‘456’,
‘authdesc’ => ‘test’,
‘auth_id’ => ‘2’,
‘authowner’ => ‘tester’,
‘body’ => ‘656123’,
‘active’ => (int) 1,
],
(int) 2 => [
‘id’ => ‘455’,
‘body’ => ‘1235656’,
‘active’ => (int) 1,
],```

as you can see 'authdesc, ‘auth_id’ , ‘authowner’ are not always set in $requestData but they should be ignore if they are not set instead of being set to null… the old value should be kept in the db…

any idea?

2

I have never seen Cake overwrite values in an entity when patching with data that doesn’t contain those fields. If your data really is as shown, authdesc should not be touched at all in the entities for IDs 453 and 455. If they are being changed, it’s some other code of yours, maybe something like beforeMarshal is filling in fields that are not present?

3

well if i say debug($docs);exit; after i do the patchentity it will set ‘authdesc’
‘authowner’ to null in $docs if there was no provided value for them…

4

in additional there is only my validation in the table:

        $validator
        ->notEmptyString('authdesc', 'Error', function ($context) {
            return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === true && isset($context['data']['auth_id']) && in_array($context['data']['auth_id'], [3, 4, 5, 9]);
        })
        ->maxLength('authdesc', 25, 'Error', function ($context) {
            return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === true && isset($context['data']['auth_id']) && in_array($context['data']['auth_id'], [3, 4, 5, 9]);
        })
        ->minLength('authdesc', 5, 'Error.', function ($context) {
            return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === true && isset($context['data']['auth_id']) && in_array($context['data']['auth_id'], [3, 4, 5, 9]);
        })
        ->add('authdesc', 'validFormat', [
            'rule' => function ($value, $context) {
            return preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9äöüÄÖÜß$%§!"+\-.,?()\/ \r\n]*$/', $value) === 1;
            },
            'message' => 'Error',
            'on' => function ($context) {
            return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === true && isset($context['data']['auth_id']) && in_array($context['data']['auth_id'], [3, 4, 5, 9]);
            }
            ])
            
        ->add('authdesc', 'noChange', [
            'rule' => function ($value, $context) {
        return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === true;
            },
            'message' => 'Error',
            'on' => function ($context) {
            return isset($context['newRecord']) && $context['newRecord'] === false;
            }
            ]);
5

Can you show us what debug($docs) looks like before and after patching?