CakePHP 2.X: HABTM with Bookmarks / Tags, saving from same form

Question

I'm trying to build a simple bookmarking site as a project to learn some CakePHP, but am having significant trouble figuring out how to do HABTM (or whatever I might need) for Bookmarks/Tags.

I have a simple form which has the fields 'Title', 'Url', 'Tags', which is used to create a new bookmark.

My tables are set up as follows:

bookmarks: id (primary), uid, title, url, private (boolean), time
tags: id (primary), tag
bookmarks_tags: id (primary), bookmark_id, tag_id

There's also a users table.

My bookmark model (Bookmark.php) is pretty simple so far, looks like:

class Bookmark extends AppModel {
public $name = "Bookmark";
public $displayField = 'name';
public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
    'Tag' => array(
            'className' => 'Tag',
            'joinTable' => 'bookmarks_tags',
            'foreignKey' => 'bookmark_id',
            'associationForeignKey' => 'tag_id',
            'unique' => 'keepExisting',
    )
);

And then some validation.

The tag model looks like:

class Tag extends AppModel {
public $name='Tag';
public $displayField = 'name';
public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
    'Bookmark' => array(
            'className' => 'Bookmark',
            'joinTable' => 'bookmarks_tags',
            'foreignKey' => 'tag_id',
            'associationForeignKey' => 'bookmark_id',
            'unique' => 'keepExisting',
    )
    );

The form on the frontend so far looks like this:

<div id="addBookmark" class="card">
            <div id="addBookmarkTopSpan" class="topSpan">add new bookmark</div>
            <?php echo $this->Form->create(null, array('url' => array('controller' => 'bookmarks', 'action' => 'add'))); ?>
            <fieldset>
                <?php echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.title');
                    echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.url');
                    echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.private', array('type' => 'checkbox'));
                    echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.uid', array('type' => 'hidden', 'value' => $user['User']['id']));
                    echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.Tag');
                    ?>
            </fieldset>
            <?php echo $this->Form->end(__('Submit')); ?>
    </div>

As I said, I'm pretty new to Cake so I'm not sure what's going on here..currently if I enter data into that form and hit submit the bookmark gets created just fine but nothing at all happens with the tag. How do I save the data into the associated join table and the Tags table?

Answer 1

In your view change

echo $this->Form->input('Bookmark.Tag');

to

echo $this->Form->input('Tag.id');

or

echo $this->Form->input('Tag.0.id');
echo $this->Form->input('Tag.1.id');
echo $this->Form->input('Tag.2.id');
...

Just couple of side notes about your code ...

Since you're following CakePHP conventions, you don't need to specify the parameters for the relationship;

public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array('Tag');

and

public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array('Bookmark');

is enough.

Rather than setting the user ID in the form, which could be modified, set it in your controller:

BookmarksController.php

public function add() {
    if ($this->request->is('post')) {
        $this->request->data['Bookmark']['uid'] = $this->Auth->user('id');
        if ($this->Note->save($this->request->data)) {
            ...