FK and M2M realtions in Magento

Question

Hi

How can I use fk and m2m relations in magento? I read about EAV and I understand the benefits but I don't understand how to approach common problems in relational databases.

For example, I have products that should match several type of cars. Each car has make,model,year. With regular tables I'll have a Car table and I'll have m2m relation from each product to this table. Then, I can filter by car and reference the user's car in the order.

How can I implement cars and relate them to products in magento and how can I save the user's car in the order?

Thanks

Answer 1

The ORM Provided by Magento's Framework does not support many to many relationships. If you need to provide this type of functionality for additional Magento functionality you'll need to use a different ORM system, or write your SQL queries manually.

If you want to stick to the Magento core files, I'd investigate the Zend_Db* files that come bundled in lib.

Remember, while there's a lot of cool Framework features in Magento, it wasn't built to be a general purpose development framework. It was built to service the needs of Varien/Magento Inc in building an Ecommerce Platform.