CakePHP Model::save allowed partially blank data during record insertion

Question

I was investigating CakePHP (2.3.4) Model::save method to insert new records and ran into a little snag:

//Two fields provided, email field intended to fail validation
$data = array('Member' => array(
    'username' => 'hello',
    'email' => 'world'
));
$this->Member->create();
var_dump($this->Member->save($data, true));

The above save() will return false and no data will be written to the database. However if I change the data to:

//One field provided, intended to pass validation
$data = array('Member' => array(
    'username' => 'hello'
));

then save() will attempt to write a new record to database with a blank email field. I realize that skipping validation for unspecified fields might be a useful behavior during updates, but is there a CakePHP recommended way to handle partially empty data sets when creating new records? Thanks a lot.

Edit: Thanks to Sam Delaney for the tip. In case anybody else gets stumped, this did the trick: CakePHP Data Validation: field 'required' key

This key accepts either a boolean, or create or update. Setting this key to true will make the field always required. While setting it to create or update will make the field required only for update or create operations. If ‘required’ is evaluated to true, the field must be present in the data array. For example, if the validation rule has been defined as follows:

I had originally baked the model and forgotten that required => true was left out of the validation rule. Setting it to true or 'create' would've avoided me blank records getting inserted due to gibberish data array.

Sam Delaney Sam Delaney · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-02T07:08:23

IMHO what you've experienced is the desired behavior. Consider that you have the same two fields within a form and the user provides a value for only username. Both username and email field are submitted even though email is empty. Then on the server, you try to save the record only to find out that it has failed validation which you feedback to the user. On the other hand, perhaps in your system it is perfectly possible to create a user without requiring an email (for example root access account), CakePHP's validation implementation allows both of these scenarios.

If this flexibility isn't what you desire, just set the required attribute for your validation rule as true:

public $validate = array(
    'email' => array(
        'rule'     => 'email',
        'required' => true
    )
);

This will satisfy your all or nothing requirement.

CakePHP Model::save allowed partially blank data during record insertion

1 Answers