Thanks for the response.
So to clarify your first idea -- would my model associations look
something like this?
- Invitations belongTo Users (senders/creators).
- Invitations haveAndBelongToMany Users (invitees)
- Friends belongTo Users
One issue I'm seeing with all this is invitees are often not
registered users, but just a bunch of email addresses. Once they get
the invite, they have to register, but does that change the
associations or models much? I am thinking I could have an "active"
field in my Users model/table that puts all fields to null except
their email address, then when they hit the invite link and register
their username/password, they become "active".
I think this will all work right so long as the Friends belongTo Users
association can be pulled off. I have a table right now that is
similar to what you described, but it's like this
user_id, varchar(255)
friend_id, varchar(255)
so if user 'john_doe' has user_id in the Users table of 1, and he has
3 friends with different user_ids, the table users_friends would look
like:
user_id | friend_id
==============
1 | 7
1 | 12
1 | 19
and so on.
Your ACL Groups idea is interesting. Any suggested reading for that
'generic' setup? Sounds more simplified, but I'm not sure how the
database tables and model associations would compare to the first idea
I've outlined.
Thanks again
On Dec 1, 1:04 pm, Rob <webwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In a way, you're building groups similar to what you'd do for ACL.
>
> Based on what you've outlined, I would just have the Invitations
> belong to a User (sender), and HABTM Users (invitees), and then have
> another relationship for "Friends" that would belong to a User, and
> contain the Users that are "Friends".
>
> That said, you could also go for a more generic approach like is used
> for ACL, and have Users and Groups, where there is a HABTM between
> Users and Groups, and then have one Group that would be "Friends" of a
> User, and another group that would be the "Invitees" for an event.
>
> You need the join table if the relationship is going to be many-to-
> many, you can accomplish the same thing without the join table if you
> denormalize the keys back into the other table (which is typically
> what you want for one-to-many or one-to-one sorts of relationships).
>
> For example, you could have your "Friends" table include a foreign-key
> for owner_user_id (owner) and another for user_id (friends), which
> would result in one row in the "Friends" table for each User that is a
> "Friend". Really depends on the volume of data and how normalized you
> want to make your data model IMHO.
>
> On Nov 30, 5:24 pm, boomswitch <boomswi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > New here, new to CakePHP, but loving it so far.
>
> > I'm working on planning a basic invitation application, but I'm
> > struggling with how to plan my database and some model associations.
>
> > A few things about my current setup:
>
> > - CakePHP 1.2-latest, Apache, MySQL
> > - I have a working User (authentication) model
>
> > For this invitation system, there are a few seemingly simple
> > requirements that I'm struggling to design properly within Cake:
>
> > - Users can invite Friends to events.
> > - Users can invite Users to events.
> > - Friends are registered users that Users have added to their Friends
> > list.
>
> > In other words, all persons invited to an event are registered users.
> > However, some are marked Friends and some aren't. How can I relate
> > this all properly to the User model? I think I have a few of these
> > right, but I'm wondering if there's a better way to keep Friends Lists
> > and also associate both Friends and non-Friends (Users) to
> > Invitations.
>
> > - Invitations "belongTo" a User (the creator/owner).
> > - User "hasMany" Invitations.
> > - Invitations have many invitees which can be Friends or non-Friends
> > -- all of which are Users.
>
> > How do I store my list of all the invitees for an Invitation? Would I
> > need an Aquaintances model (for non-Friends that are invited) with an
> > hasAndBelongsToMany association and use a join table in MySQL? Or
> > would there be a simpler design...
>
> > Currently, I've got a working Friends List by using a join table that
> > stores user_id and friend_id.
>
> > All feedback is greatly appreciated, be gentle, I'm new to PHP and
> > specifically CakePHP. :)
>
> > Thanks!
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