Module with dependent sub-model for one-to-many relationship

ebynum · April 2012

I have a module that defines a "meeting" event. It has a bunch of normal fields (title, start date, end date, etc.). However, each meeting can have an arbitrary number of attached files (meeting minutes, presentation files, photos of the meeting). Those files do not fit "in" the meeting without making a lot of things unwieldy. It is straightforward (from a DB design perspective) to make a meeting_attachments table that has a foreign_key out to the meeting's ID and then has an arbitrary number of rows for each meeting.

It seems like the appropriate place to ADD a meeting attachment is on the meeting's "detail" page. And it's straightforward to have a

fuel_edit('create', 'Add Attachment', 'meeting_attachments');

call in the meeting's "detail" page. But as far as I can tell, there's no way for me to pass the meeting_id in to the meeting_attachments create page, so I can't establish the relevant foreign_key.

This seems to be the same problem that was discussed here:

http://www.getfuelcms.com/forums/discussion/587/form_fields-function-with-related-tables-one-to-many-relationship/

but there was never an answer to that question. Am I missing something? Is there a better way to do this?

ebynum · April 2012

NOTE: Right this second, I'm calling

$this->session->set_userdata('meeting_id', $meeting->id);

from my VIEW, right after I obtain $meeting with a fuel_model( ... ) call, and then pulling it back out with

$this->session->userdata('meeting_id');

in the form_fields() function of the meeting_attachments model. But this feels sketchy for a bunch of reasons, including that (from my understanding), those are both happening in the same request (the entire VIEW gets parsed, putting a placeholder in where fuel_edit( ... ) was, and then another pass goes through to replace the placeholders where appropriate. I don't really remember how CI handles session userdata within a single request, so I don't know how trustworthy this technique is. And it seems a little bit backwards anyhow.

ebynum · April 2012

I run into a similar problem on the presentation side. When I'm looking at a MEETING, how do I get the list of MEETING_ATTACHMENTS?

It is (again) straightforward to add a method to the meeting Record Object that calls out to a method in the meeting_attachments model, but I don't see how to get the items that are returned to be Record Objects.

admin · April 2012

The passing a foreign key to create a new record while inline editing is still a bit kludgy and is something we will be addressing. Your current method is probably as good as any right now.

With regards to the presentation side, you should be able to create a method like you suggested on the meeting_model record class that can return all the meeting attachment objects (assuming you have setup a meeting_attachments_model and a corresponding meeting_attachment_model... note the no "s"... record class):


// in your meeting_model class
function get_attachments()
{
     return $this->lazy_load($this->id, 'meeting_attachments_model', TRUE);
}

ebynum · April 2012

The lazy_load seems to work in the small sense, but if i loop across what it returns, there is only a single meeting_attachment_model record object returned, not some sort of list of them.

Lance · April 2012

You've definetly set the third param to true? That ultimately runs your models find_all method.

What about if you specifiy the column to match against with:


return $this->lazy_load(array('your_id_field' => $this->id), 'meeting_attachments_model', TRUE);

^ I have many examples where that works for me.

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Module with dependent sub-model for one-to-many relationship

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