Kohana "has many through" relation

Question

Hi,

I was wondering what the best method is to edit a 'has many through' relation with a form. Let's say I have a bunch of users that can belong to multiple categories.

The form would have some checkboxes like this:

<input type="checkbox" name="category_ids" value="1" />    
<input type="checkbox" name="category_ids" value="2" />

Then in my controller I could do something like:

// dump all relations
DB::delete('users_categories')->where('user_id','=',$user->id)->execute();

// add new relations
foreach (explode(',', $_POST['category_ids']) as $category)
    $user->add('category', ORM::factory('category', $category))

But this looks too complicated to me (also because I have more than one 'has many through' relations). Is there an easier / better way to accomplish this using kohana orm? :)

Answer 1

thats how i do it

// C
$roles = ORM::factory('role')->find_all();
foreach ($roles as $role)
{
    $action = isset($form['user']['roles'][$role->id]) ? 'add' : 'remove';

    // you dont need this if-statement if you'r using ko2
    if ($action === 'add' && $user->has('roles', $role))
    {
        continue;
    }

    $user->$action('roles', $role);
}

// V
<?
$roles = ORM::factory('role')->find_all();
foreach ($roles as $role):
?>
    <?= form::checkbox('user[roles]['.$role->id.']', $role->id, $user->has('roles', $role)) ?>
    <?= form::label('user_roles_'.$role->id, $role->name) ?>
    <br />
<? endforeach ?>

Answer 2

To find what was added (reverse the args to find what was removed) consider using array_diff().

With this you should be able to code something more efficient than pure orm.