Comments on: Using a table without corresponding model

By: cakebaker

cakebaker — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:04:58 +0000

@skiedr: Yeah, the solution using the ClassRegistry looks cleaner. But personally I’m not so happy about ClassRegistry::init(), as a) the method name is misnamed and b) I think this functionality should be somewhere else.

@Rafael: Yes, you are right, that also works. I would have expected this method to fail in such a case, because there is no such model to load. Anyway, thanks for the hint!

By: rafaelbandeira3

rafaelbandeira3 — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:24:04 +0000

Now I was wondering, you could just use Controller::loadModel(), couldn’t you?

$this->loadModel(‘Month’);
$this->Month->find(‘all’);

Cleaner and “cakisher”.

By: rafaelbandeira3

rafaelbandeira3 — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:22:01 +0000

@Tim Koschuetzki: I wouldn’t say “a hack” as it only works because Cake supports it, the already mentioned by hartjes: “dynamic models”, so, as commented about a feature in my blog: “a valid solution”.

By: skiedr

skiedr — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:42:41 +0000

Solution with ClassRegistry looks more correct from ideology point of view.
Code that used ClassRegistry::init still work correctly in test suite without any changes.

By: Tim Koschuetzki

Tim Koschuetzki — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:47:02 +0000

@Adny: Please explain your model setup.

Hrm seems like a hack to me. :) But if it gets the job done the client wont care much.

By: cakebaker

cakebaker — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:35:26 +0000

@all: Thanks for your comments! @Stepan: At least according to Chris Hartjes' article it is a feature. @Bruno: Yes, if you want to inherit app-specific functionality you have to instantiate the AppModel class. In that case you have to change the import statement of the first example to:


App::import('Model', 'App');

By: Bruno Bergher

Bruno Bergher — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:49:31 +0000

Considering what Stepan raises, shouldn’t the first example instantiate AppModel, in order to inherit app-specific functionality, instead of the vanilla core Model?

This is pretty interesting by the way, thanks.

By: Stepan Stolyarov

Stepan Stolyarov — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:19:45 +0000

I’ve noticed that CakePHP performs the same trick when you (accidentally) write something like

class Foo extends AppModel {
  var $hasMany = array('Bars'); // note plural
}

Here, it instantiates AppModel to deal with bars table.

Took me a few hours to determine why Bar::afterSave() is not called — it was not the class I needed! Still don’t know whether it’s a bug or a feature. :)

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:05:02 +0000

That’s great. I’ll use this for retrieving icons for a given mimetype.