MainelyDesign.com Blog

Forcing A Single Join in CakePHP Pagination

Posted on 10/14/2011 at 09:25 am | Viewed 22,722 times | 0 comments

The devil's in the details... I was trying to make a really simple, dreadfully easy, database join in my CakePHP web application.  I've forced joins in Cake before, using the 'joins' key in the options array for find calls and paginate calls with no issue.  It was late and for the first time I only wanted to use a single join.  I copied the join code from a much more complex web app and pasted it into my new 'joins' conditions.  And then... I got SQL errors. 

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Inserting NOW() into MySQL Using CakePHP

Posted on 08/11/2011 at 11:16 pm | Viewed 14,919 times | 0 comments

Great find.  If you want to insert NOW() into your query using CakePHP's save() or saveAll() functions, you can use the following expression:

$this->data['Model']['custom_date_field'] = DboSource::expression('NOW()');

Not sure how it works on MSSQL, but I will be testing that soon.

Cheers,
-Kevin Wentworth

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Best PaginateCount for CakePHP - with Group By Support

Posted on 08/07/2011 at 05:03 pm | Viewed 20,122 times | 0 comments

I'm been muddling my way through pagination with multiple joins, and complex filtering.  I finally got it all working (more on that later, maybe....) when I noticed that I couldn't paginate my results.  Everything was working fine until I added a "group" parameter to the find call.  Instead of getting the right count, I got a count of 1!  A quick look at my sql log tables (at the bottom of the page) and I saw that I had actually returned all the mysql records that were needed!  If only there was a way to use them...

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Changing CakePHP's Model useTable on the Fly

Posted on 11/02/2010 at 05:12 pm | Viewed 18,742 times | 0 comments

I finally found an answer to/solution to something I've never been able to get around in CakePHP before: dynamically changing/setting the useTable value in a model.  You can't just say $this->CakePHPModel->useTable = 'cakephp_table_name';  Instead you have to use the following function:

Setting CakePHP Model useTable Dynamically

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Getting All ACL Permissions in One Lookup (CakePHP 1.3)

Posted on 09/19/2010 at 11:36 am | Viewed 21,303 times | 1 comment

The biggest hurdle I've had to overcome migrating my CakePHP application from 1.2 to the much improved 1.3 branch involves Plugins and the ACL component.  A while back I noticed that my backend was kind of sluggish due to all of the ACL lookups (that happen with each request) so I optimized my ACL database tables.  At that same time, I also discovered an incredible mysql query that would lookup all of the ACL permissions for a particular ARO.  This setup worked great... until I started upgrading to CakePHP 1.3. 

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Global Mysql Find and Replace with CakePHP

Posted on 08/31/2010 at 09:03 am | Viewed 14,926 times | 0 comments

I'm moving my Content Management System over to CakePHP 1.3.  I'll post an article about my experiences later.  Today I will focus on one and only one issue with the migration from Cake 1.2 to 1.3: the change of webroot/theme/ to webroot/theme/ to serve static content.  At first I was a little disapointed/scared at the prospects of making this change, but have since come to see the absolute brilliance in this approach.

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Difference Between Truncate and Empty (Delete From) in Mysql

Posted on 06/23/2010 at 02:30 pm | Viewed 33,257 times | 1 comment

I use Navicat for administering all of my MySQL databases.  It has a command that I always use- empty table.  I noticed today that all along there has been a command right below it for truncate table.  Hmmm.  I figured this would result in the same outcome and wondered what the difference is between emptying a mysql table and truncating the same table.

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Speeding Up Cakephp's ACL Component

Posted on 05/28/2010 at 12:12 pm | Viewed 18,149 times | 1 comment

I came across a posting today that changed the performance of my application tremendously and reinforced a concept I had forgotten about- mysql indices. I didn't realize my app was running slow until I implemented the mysql indexes below- no formal benchmark testing, but I would say speed improved by about 300%.  The improvement was most noticeble when you are building your ACL using the CakePHP suggested method.

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Best Free Mysql Zip code Database

Posted on 04/20/2010 at 04:42 pm | Viewed 20,254 times | 0 comments

I'm sure every developer reaches a point when they will need to use a mysql database of zip codes in the United States.  Say you want to make a store locator and show how many miles a customer is from your store, or if you have some custom php logic that uses zip codes, you will inevitably need a mysql database of zipcodes. 

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Controlling CakePHP Error Handling When Debug = 0

Posted on 04/19/2010 at 04:27 pm | Viewed 28,180 times | 1 comment

I finally had a client request a piece of functionality that required me to program CakePHP so I could better control the default error handling when the site is in production mode (i.e. debug is set to 0).  By default, CakePHP will throw a 404 page not found header whenever ANY errors occur on a production site with debug equal to zero.  This works great, most of the time.  But what about when you are having database connectivity issues?  Say when there are too many mysql connections to that overloaded shared hosting box?  Modifed CakePHP error handling to the rescue.

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CakePHP Translate Behavior - Lessons Learned

Posted on 12/15/2009 at 08:29 am | Viewed 34,775 times | 5 comments

I've been working on setting up a multi-lingual web site for one of my clients.  I was excited at the opportunity to finally use CakePHP's built-in internationalization and locale functions.  However, I ran into some issues that I'm sure other newbies to internationaliztion will run into as well.  Here's some take-backs of what I learned while using the Translate Behavior in Cake...

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Delete Dependent Just Deleted All My Records

Posted on 09/17/2009 at 10:12 am | Viewed 13,536 times | 0 comments

Oh man! I just deleted all my database records using $model->del($id) with dependent=>true in the model association.  That wasn't supposed to happen!  It turns out to be an issue with how I specified my model association.  What's weird is that everything works fine except when I go to do the delete with cascade set to true.

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Invalid Date Value Error in MySQL

Posted on 09/09/2009 at 02:26 pm | Viewed 12,823 times | 0 comments

I ran into an interesting issue with valid dates and MySQL on Windows.  I wrote a CakePHP import function that basically moves MySQL data from one DB to the other.  I never thought that I would see an error related to an invalid date, but I did.

What determines if a date value is invalid (read: warning) or unacceptable (read: error)?

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Manually Installing MySQL on Windows 2003 Server

Posted on 09/02/2009 at 12:02 pm | Viewed 12,127 times | 0 comments

I have been trying to install MySQL on a web server running Windows 2003 for quite a while now.  I was finally successful! Here's how I did it...

Does your server have a hard-coded IP address?

If so, you need to make localhost refer to the manually assigned IP address in your hosts file.  This file is located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

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Using Between with Date Ranges in Proper DB Date Format

Posted on 07/09/2009 at 11:56 am | Viewed 18,369 times | 0 comments

I need my CakePHP apps to run on both LAMP and Windows IIS using MSSQL Server.  Usually this isn't a problem because CakePHP does such a good job of database abstraction and database independence.  However, I came across a scenario the other day where I needed to select a date range using the BETWEEN SQL command.

Using CakePHP's BETWEEN function for date ranges

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Distinct vs. Group By in MySQL (and CakePHP)

Posted on 05/21/2009 at 11:27 am | Viewed 21,737 times | 2 comments

An interesting problem- I am returning a list of files that have already been uploaded, so the user can link to an existing file.  This creates a new record (duplicate record).  The next time the user goes to select a file, there will now be two entries for the same file.  DISTINCT to the rescue, or so I thought.

DISTINCT applies to the whole select statement

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Dealing with MySQL Old-Style Passwords

Posted on 05/20/2009 at 04:37 pm | Viewed 12,728 times | 0 comments

I ran into a problem I've seen before- Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client. Last time I came across this MySQL error, it was a simple query to fix the issue (from dev.mysql.com):

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd') WHERE Host = 'some_host' AND User = 'some_user';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

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