CakePHP: Tweak With Search, Managing Form Post Data

Nowadays, it has rather become a trend to let the visitors sort or filter search results. We let them search by the bestsellers, popular, newest, or, simply by price. We can use a form with a select box having options and let user hit the submit button. You can get the first result page to work pretty well with your default CakePHP setup. But the pagination fails. It is because Cake does not save the form post data. And here is a simple trick I found somewhere in the Internet.

USE SESSION VARIABLES.

In your controller setup:

function my_function() {

if(!empty($this->data)){
$this ->Session->write('search',$this->data['Model']['field']);
$search_string =$this->data['Model']['field'];
} else {
$search_string =$this ->Session->read('search');
}

$condition = array('Model.field_name'=>$search_string);
$search_data = $this->Model->find('all',array('conditions'=>$condition));
$this->set('search_data',$search_data);
}

/* in your view file use */
debug($search_data);
/* you can see the recordset, if debug mode is set to 2 or above. */

Hope this helps someone else as well.
Happy baking.

How to Create Multiple AJAX Forms on Same Page in CakePHP

Settings: Say, your posts/index.ctp page displays the latest ten posts. You want to allow user to rate each post.

Requirement: You MUST have a Post Model and a Comment Model.

In your respective view file: /app/view/posts/view.ctp

Type:

$i = 0; // a counter to create new divs

foreach ($posts as $post) :

// Code to display your post title, body etc.

// Now our comment form for each post

$i++;

$new_comment = 'new_comment_'.$i ; // for comment div id

$form_id = 'form_id_'.$i; // for form id

echo '<div id="'.  $new_comment .'"</div>';

echo $ajax->form(array('type' => 'post', 'options' => array(

'model'=>'Post', 

'update'=>$new_comment,

 'url'=>array('controller'=>'comments','action'=>'add'),

 'id'=>$form_id,'class'=>'CommentForm')

                                        ));

echo $form->input('comment',array('label'=>'Write your comment','type'=>'textarea', 'cols'=>'60','rows'=>'4'));

echo $form->end('Submit'); // close the form

// now close div

echo '</div>';

endforeach;

- - - - - - - - -
The idea is to create unique div to position each form and creating unique id for each form.

I created this post just before leaving for my office on the fly. Let me know if it helps.

CakePHP Select Empty

Say, you have a select box displaying dropdown options for categories. You want to give the user liberty to select nothing. In CakePHP it is pretty simple. Use 'empty' options in your view file.


<?php echo $form->input('category_id', array( 'empty' => '(choose one)')); ?>

Hope this helps someone.
Happy baking.

How to Generate Options for HTML Select Tags in CakePHP

How to generate options for HTML Select Tags in CakePHP?

As such

1. You can retrieve options from a Model (Database Table).
2. Or, you can specify options for select tag in view files.

Just keep in mind CakePHP does not support ENUM type field. So, you may not use 'ENUM' datatype in table fields.

To retrieve options from Database Table

Say, you have two Models (tables) - Order and Size; 

Fields in 'sizes' table:

id, size

And fields in 'orders' table:

id, quantity, size_id

In your OrdersController file (/app/controllers/orders_controller.php)

$sizes = $this->Order->Size->find('all');

$this->set('sizes',$sizes);

Now in your view file: (/app/views/orders/add.ctp)

echo $form->create('Order');

echo $form->input('quantity');

echo $form->input('size_id');

echo $form->end('Submit');

And done.

Note the use of variable names. 

It is important to name the variables as per this convention. It will display all sizes available in database when you are adding a new order. To retrieve size field in table 'sizes', you need to specify variable name 'sizes' (note plural form) in your respective controller/action.  Now when you refer to 'size_id' in view file - cake will create a select tag on the fly with options retrieved from database.  

OK. It was pretty simple.

Now, how to display options for HTML Select Tag without any database table:

In this case, we have, say, only 'orders' table with following fields

id, quantity, size

In your view file (/app/views/orders/add.ctp), specify - 

$form->create('Order');

$form->input('quantity');

$sizes = array('s'=>'Small', 'm'=>'Medium', 'l'=>'Large');

echo $form->input('size', array('options'=>$sizes, 'default'=>'m'));

$form->end('submit');

That's it.