CakePHP AutoComplete Question

Question

I am working on a book review application and I am using autoComplete to search for titles in when creating a review. The review model has an associated book_id field and the relationship is setup as the review hasOne book and a book hasMany reviews.

I am trying to pass the Book.id (into the book_id field), but I want to display Book.name for the user to select from. With the default setup (accomplished via CakePHP's tutorial), I can only pass Book.name. Is it possible to display the name and pass the id?

Also, I am passing it via the following code in the create() action of the review controller:

$this->data['Review']['book_id'] = $this->data['Book']['id'];

Is that the proper way to do it in CakePHP? I know in Ruby on Rails, it is automatic, but I can't seem to make it work automagically in CakePHP. Finally, I am not using the generator because it is not available in my shared hosting environment... so if this is the wrong way, what do I need other than associates in my models to make it happen automatically?

Thanks for the help and I promise this is my question for awhile...

UPDATE- I tried the following, but it is not working. Any ideas why?

    function autoComplete() {
    $this->set('books', $this->Book->find('all', array(
        'conditions' => array(
            'Book.name LIKE' => $this->data['Book']['name'].'%'
        ),
        'fields' => array('id','name')
    )));
    $this->layout = 'ajax';
}

The problem is that when I use the code above in the controller, the form submits, but it doesn't save the record... No errors are also thrown, which is weird.

UPDATE2:

I have determine that the reason this isn't working is because the array types are different and you can't change the array type with the autoComplete helper. As a workaround, I tried the follow, but it isn't working. Can anyone offer guidance why?

function create() {
    if($this->Review->create($this->data) && $this->Review->validates()) {
        $this->data['Review']['user_id'] = $this->Session->read('Auth.User.id');
        $this->Book->find('first', array('fields' => array('Book.id'), 'conditions' => array('Book.name' => $this->data['Book']['name'])));
        $this->data['Review']['book_id'] = $this->Book->id;
        $this->Review->save($this->data);
        $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
    } else {
        $errors = $this->Review->invalidFields();
    }
}

FINAL UPDATE:

Ok, I found that the helper only takes the find(all) type or array and that the "id" field wasn't passing because it only applied to the autoComplete's LI list being generated. So, I used the observeField to obtain the information and then do a database lookup and tried to create a hidden field on the fly with the ID, but that didn't work. Finally, the observeField would only take the characters that I put in instead of what I clicked, due to an apparent Scriptaculous limitation. So, I ended up going to a dropdown box solution for now and may eventually look into something else. Thanks for all of the help anyway!

Answer 1

First of all, $this->data will only contain ['Book']['id'] if the field exists in the form (even if it's hidden).

To select something by name and return the id, use the list variant of the find method, viz:

    $selectList = $this->Book->find('list', array(
                                               'fields' => array(
                                                              'id', 
                                                              'name'
                                            )));
    $this->set('selectList', $selectList);

In the view, you can now use $selectList for the options in the select element:

    echo $form->input('Book.id', array('type' => 'hidden'));
    echo $form->input('template_id', array(
                                        'options' => $selectList,
                                        'type' => 'select'
                                     ));