Need to have a user in more than one groups in cakePHP

Question

Hello I am trying the ACL component in cakephp for my web application. The example on their website for using their ACL structure has a many to one relationship between groups and users. A user can belong to one group, while a group can have more than one users in it.

But I have a situation where I need to have a few users in more than one group. For that I had to change the table structure, as it would be a many to many. So I built an associative entity called "groups_users". Now I have baked all the controllers, models, and views.

I have added groups and users, and things are working fine. I have also added the components into the parent class, AppController. I have also generated the ACL tables ACOs, AROs and AROs_ACOs using the baking console.

So in the groups_users add view, I have a list of users and groups. I can choose the users and their groups, and on submit a record has to be technically created in my groups_users table.

But to my surprise, records are being inserted into aros_acos table which is weird. I believe there is some internal relation between users, groups and the acl tables. I tried to understand if there was any foreign key cascading between these tables, but nothing was mentioned in the config/schema/dbacl.sql file.

I am pasting my table structure for a better understanding of my problem.

SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='TRADITIONAL';

CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci ;
USE `acl_cake` ;

-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `acl_cake`.`users`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE  TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake`.`users` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
  `username` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL ,
  `password` CHAR(40) NOT NULL ,
  `created` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `modified` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ,
  UNIQUE INDEX (`username` ASC) );


-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `acl_cake`.`groups`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE  TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake`.`groups` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
  `name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL ,
  `created` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `modified` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`) );


-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `acl_cake`.`posts`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE  TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake`.`posts` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
  `title` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL ,
  `body` TEXT NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `created` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `modified` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `user_id` INT(11) NOT NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ,
  INDEX `fk_posts_users1` (`user_id` ASC) ,
  CONSTRAINT `fk_posts_users1`
    FOREIGN KEY (`user_id` )
    REFERENCES `acl_cake`.`users` (`id` )
    ON DELETE NO ACTION
    ON UPDATE NO ACTION);


-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `acl_cake`.`widgets`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE  TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake`.`widgets` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
  `name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL ,
  `part_no` VARCHAR(12) NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  `quantity` INT(11) NULL DEFAULT NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`) );


-- -----------------------------------------------------
-- Table `acl_cake`.`groups_users`
-- -----------------------------------------------------
CREATE  TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `acl_cake`.`groups_users` (
  `id` INT NOT NULL ,
  `user_id` INT(11) NOT NULL ,
  `group_id` INT(11) NOT NULL ,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ,
  INDEX `fk_permissions_users` (`user_id` ASC) ,
  INDEX `fk_permissions_groups1` (`group_id` ASC) ,
  CONSTRAINT `fk_permissions_users`
    FOREIGN KEY (`user_id` )
    REFERENCES `acl_cake`.`users` (`id` )
    ON DELETE NO ACTION
    ON UPDATE NO ACTION,
  CONSTRAINT `fk_permissions_groups1`
    FOREIGN KEY (`group_id` )
    REFERENCES `acl_cake`.`groups` (`id` )
    ON DELETE NO ACTION
    ON UPDATE NO ACTION)
ENGINE = InnoDB;



SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE;
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS;
SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS;

Bot Bot · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-13T19:13:16

This may help get you pointed in the right direction or possibly give you another route to take. Simple Auth Users Has And Belongs To Many Groups CakePHP

Need to have a user in more than one groups in cakePHP

2 Answers