CakePHP HABTM question

Question

Might be a newbie question as I'm trying to see what all these "PHP frameworks" are at my free time.

For starters I want to add multiple tags to multiple photos. I have a tags model and mot model (the photos). Snip of mot model:

var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
               'Tag' =>
                  array(
                      'className'              => 'Tag',
                      'joinTable'              => 'mots_tags',
                      'foreignKey'             => 'mot_id',
                   'associationForeignKey'  => 'tag_id',
                      'unique'                 => false
                     )
                    );

In my tags controller in add() I have:

$this->Tag->save($this->data);

When print_r'ing $this->data I see:

Array

( [Mot] => Array ( [id] => 2 )

[Tag] => Array
    (
        [title] => 21e21e
    )

)

Tag get inserted into Tags table, but nothing gets inserted into mottags(theres underscore between mot and tag but it italics when i write it here instead of becoming an underscore) table. My mots_tags db schema: (sqlite)

create table mots_tags (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, mot_id INTEGER, tag_id INTEGER)

Any clues why Cake writes only to Tags table and not to associacions table? I don't get any SQL errors. Is there a way to see if it tries to write to associations table at all?

Answer 1

Try

$this->Tag->saveAll($this->data);

---

Edit:

Well, you definitely need saveAll(). Additionally, the array of the connected HABTM model needs to be in a certain, slightly curious format. If I remember correctly, it should look like this:

array(
   'Tag' => array('title' => ...),         // primary model
   'Mot' => array(                         // connected HABTM model
      'Mot' => array($id, $id, $id, ...)
   )
);

Answer 2

OK Found a solution myself ^-^

Because Mot's can have many tags, and Tags can have many Mots, and Tags adding is handled by tags controller instead of mots controller, tag model must also contains $hasAndBelongsToMany. Same as in mot model, just with Tag(s) replaced bu Mot(s):

This should have been in tag model also, not only in mot model:

var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
               'Mot' =>
                  array(
                      'className'              => 'Mot',
                      'joinTable'              => 'mots_tags',
                      'foreignKey'             => 'tag_id',
                   'associationForeignKey'  => 'mot_id',
                      'unique'                 => false
                     )
                    );