Recommended method to handle record editing with approval in CakePHP?

Question

I haven't been able to find any information regarding the best way to handle record editing with approval in CakePHP.

Specifically, I need to allow users to edit data in a record, but the edited data should not overwrite the original record data until administrators have approved the change. I could put the edited records in a new table and then overwrite the originals when I approve them but I wonder if there is an easier way since this idea doesn't seem to play well with the cake philosophy so to speak.

Answer 1

You are going to need somewhere to store that data until an administrator can approve it.

I'm not sure how this can be easier than creating another table with the new edits and the original post id. Then when an administrator approves the edit, the script overwrites the old record with the edited version.

Answer 2

I'm working on a similar setup and I'm going with storing the draft record in the same table but with a flag set on the record called "draft". Also, the original record has a "draft_id" field that has the id of the draft record stored in it.

Then in the model when the original record is loaded by the display engine it shows it normally. But when the edit or preview actions try to load the record, it checks the "draft_id" field and then loads the other record if it's set.

The "draft" flag is used to keep list and other group find type actions from grabbing the draft records too. This might also be solved by a more advanced SQL query but I'm not quite that good with SQL.