In CakePHP 2 we had hasMany, saveMany, saveAssociated model methods or functions to save associated data. These functions works great with straight associations but to make them work for saving multi-level association data you need a trick.
Following an example of two level deep hasMany assocation where:
UserCustomField hasMany UsersCustomFieldsList hasMany UsersCustomFieldsListEntry
In general for saving multi-level data following array structure should work:
[php]
array(
‘UsersCustomField’ => array(
‘field_name’ => ‘sdfsdfs’,
‘field_type’ => ‘dropdown’
),
‘UsersCustomFieldsList’ => array(
(int) 0 => array(
‘name’ => ‘sdfsfds’,
‘UsersCustomFieldsListEntry’ => array(
(int) 0 => array(
‘name’ => ‘sdfsdfs’
),
(int) 1 => array(
‘name’ => ‘sdfsdfsd’
)
)
)
)
)
[/php]
and to save it, one would do:
[php]$this->UsersCustomField->saveAll($data);[/php]
It works, but it saves only the top level association data but not the second level association data. The following would do the trick for saving 2-level associated data in CakePHP 1&2:
[php]$options[‘deep’] = true;
if ($this->UsersCustomField->saveAll($this->request->data, $options))[/php]
In CakePHP 3 however it has little bit different syntax for saving multi-level associations. Once has to specify
'associated'
in the options while saving an entity. For example:
[php]$user = $this->Users->patchEntity($user, $this->request->data, [
‘associated’ => [‘Employees’, ‘Employees.Courses’]
]);[/php]
