Sounds like something that could be easily handled with EAV modeling. I wrote about it awhile ago. http://blog.joebeeson.com/?p=30
There are plenty of other sources of good information on the topic. With EAV you keep the number of tables small and it's still pretty fast with smart indexing while allowing you to keep your schema dynamic. On Sep 17, 8:49 pm, bMilesp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is an interesting problem that i believe can have a reasonable > solution using cakephp. i'm not going to get into the background, but > it stems from this idea: > > http://fornicode.com/2008/03/18/cakephp-a-has-either-association/ > > now for the business. > > my current company has a custom built CMS and i've convinced them to > start implementing cakephp for it. It's not going to be a complete > overhaul, but a slow migration. The CMS manages multiple products with > tons of different attributes for an online store. so the data model > consists of multiple product tables and a product category table. > > Over time, product pricing became an issue since there were multiple > price mechanisms involved for different products, so we came up with a > solution to create a pricing system that was separate from the product > tables. This could allow for different pricing for time based events > as well as flat priced items. to match the pricing model with the > specific product, one simply needs to pass the product_id and the > product_category_id, then all relevant pricing can be retrieved. Now, > this method worked so well, we started creating other general > separations, like an image table and a google_maps table, each having > a product_id and product_category_id field to relate the data. > > following this pattern, we now have multiple "attribute" tables, and > will probably add more, like videos, artices,etc. > > Now for the Cake > > so we have over 50 product categories and associated tables. I've > created models in cakephp for a bunch of these products and came > across... "The Issue": I need to add a new "attribute" table to all > these models. So instead of going through each of these 50 model files > and adding the hasMany association i could do... well... i'm not sure. > > luckily i'm just foreseeing this problem, which is very likely to > happen, and would like to ask for a solution. > > Here's the mechanics: > > each of these attribute tables requires a product_category_id. So i > pass that in, say, the Shoe model, which has a product_category_id = > 12. The Shoe model has all the attribute tables, but i will only show > the Image, and Video association examples for brevity: > > var $hasMany = array( > 'Image' => array( > 'className' => 'Image', > 'conditions' => 'product_category_id = 12', //12 is the shoe product > category > ) > ); > > var $hasMany = array( > 'Video' => array( > 'className' => 'Video', > 'conditions' => 'product_category_id = 12', > ) > ); > > etc. > > as you can see, the product_category_id must be passed in each product > model, so if i have over 50 products besides shoes, adding a new > attribute table would be cumbersome to say the least. > > 1) I've thought of using an include file, but you cannot pass a > variable when defining class vars, so replacing the '12' with a > $variable is not possible. > > 2) I've thought of having a dummy table to relate to all the > "attribute" tables, and maybe simply including the dummy table in my > product models. But this doesn't seem to be a possible solution to my > knowledge. > > 3) so could some kind of model behavior be a solution? Not sure how to > go about this option. > > If anyone could point me in a good direction, i think this would be a > great advantage to use cakephp over our custom built CMS. Thanks to > all! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CakePHP" group. To post to this group, send email to cake-php@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
