custom queries

To continue on last weeks thought of a “lite” forum, I needed 2 tables (Forums, Posts). Since this is a “lite” forum, I did not want to create a mid-table labeled topics, so I incorporated that in the Posts table. The other reasoning behind this, is that to create a hybrid forum/blog, the topic is really just a beginning post in the thread, so keep those in the Posts table, just mark it as a topic to differentiate this from the other posts.

I created two controllers, forums_controller.php and posts_controller.php. All of the links on the application will point to the forums_controller.php file. The models need to be created, forum.php and post.php, with the relationships.

The file user.php (User model) needs to have a “hasMany” relationship with Posts.

var $hasMany = array(
	'Post' => array('className' => 'Post',
		'foreignKey' => 'post_id',
		'dependent' => false,
	)
);

The Forum model needs a “hasMany” relationship with the Post model

var $hasMany = array(
	'Post' => array('className' => 'Post',
		'foreignKey' => 'forum_id',
		'dependent' => false,
	)
);

The Post model needs a “belongsTo relationship with both the Forum and User models.

var $belongsTo = array(
    'Forum' => array('className' => 'Forum',
        'foreignKey' => 'forum_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    ),
    'User' => array('className' => 'User',
        'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
)
);

(more…)