CakePHP Not Saving BelongsTo Key

Question

I'm trying to save a record that belongs to another model. Yet, I get an error that the foreign key is missing. The CakePHP docs show examples of this working but I can't get it to work.

Here is the Form:

    echo $this->Form->create('Message', array('action'=>'add'));
                echo $this->Form->hidden('Ticket.id');
                echo $this->Form->input('Message.message');
                echo $this->Form->submit('Save Message');
                echo $this->Form->end();

Here is what is returned to the controller upon submit:

    Array(
        [Ticket] => Array
        (
            [id] => 2
        )

        [Message] => Array
        (
            [message] => Message text
        )

    )

Here is my Message model:

    class Message extends AppModel {
            public $belongsTo = array('Ticket');
    }

Here is my Ticket model:

    class Ticket extends AppModel {
        public $hasMany = 'Message';
    }

Here is my controller logic:

        $this->Message->save($this->request->data);

Here is the error message I receive:

    Error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1364 Field 'ticket_id' doesn't have a default value

The CakePHP documents are pretty clear that Cake will grab the id from the Ticket array. The only way I can get this to work is if I manually assign the ticket id to the message array.

    $this->request->data['Message']['ticket_id'] = $this->request->data['Ticket']['id']

I shouldn't have to do that. Where's the magic? I've read at least 20 similar posts but none exactly like this (probably because this is so basic that nobody has this problem because it works for them).

I'm using version 2.4.2

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Don't use Model::save() in this case, the reason is that you also want to save associated data, in order for you save data for the main model along with its associated models you need to use Model::saveAssociated().

Your controller should be looking like this

  $this->Message->saveAssociated($this->request->data);