How to save belongsToMany data in Cake 3.0?

Question

I am new to cakephp. The documentation at http://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/associations.html#belongstomany-associations and http://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/saving-data.html#saving-with-associations seem either too brief or very advanced for a beginner like me.

From what I could understand, I have done the following.

//Table Baskets belongsToMany Apples
//At BasketsTable.php in initialize()
$this->belongsToMany('Apples',[
            'joinTable' => 'apples_baskets'
        ]);

A join table apples_baskets in MySQL:

+---+---------+----------+
|id |apple_id |basket_id |
--------------------------
|   |         |          |
--------------------------

I have made the post request data to appear at the controller as:

Array
(
    [id] => 1
    [xyz] => blahblah
    [apples] => Array
        (
            [_ids] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 1
                )

        )

    [amount] => 15000
)

Now when I perform save, only the Baskets table gets updated, the join table remains untouched, and no error is thrown.

I know I am surely missing something but cant't figure out. Please help !!!

beporter beporter · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-28T14:23:05

Try checking that your Baskets Entity class makes its apples property _accessible:

<?php
namespace app\Model\Entity;

use Cake\ORM\Entity;

class Basket extends Entity {
    public $_accessible = [
        'apples', // <-- make sure this is present
    ];
}

A pretty common gotcha when working with these new Entity classes trying to load them up with data (using Table::newEntity() or Table::patchEntity()), but some of that data not actually getting saved into the Entity due to the mass-assignment protection.

Ref: http://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/orm/entities.html#mass-assignment

How to save belongsToMany data in Cake 3.0?

2 Answers