Re: Array to string conversion error when writing to db

Hi Mark

I’d try it a more cakey way.

Your model would have the following relationship

Registration HasAndBelongsToMany AudienceType

id, name

AudienceType being your data

array(1 => '5-7 years', 2 => '7-11 years', ‘3 => '7-11 years');

You’d store the relationship between the two in a join table so you’d have a table with the following fields

registration_id, audience_type_id

That would allow you to look up registrations via the audience_type_id

My feeling is this is a better way for you to link this

Read more in the book

http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/associations-linking-models-together.html

HTH.

Mike

On 17 Sep 2014, at 11:01, MarkB <markbarton68@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm new to CakePHP, OOP and my PHP knowledge & skills could probably be considered beginner++ level, so please have patience with me.

I'm producing an event registration system for a festival website. I have created a multi-step form that uses a session to temporarily record data. It asks users to specify the ideal audience for their event, based upon age. This needs to allow multiple selections, and I want to collate and write their selections into a single mySQL database text field called 'audience'.

The code I'm using to create the multiple selections in my form view is as follows (actual form has several more options)

$options = array('5-7' => '5-7 years', '7-11' => '7-11 years', '11-14' => '7-11 years');

echo $this->Form->select('audience', $options, array('multiple' => 'checkbox'));

This generates the following HTML:

<input type="hidden" name="data[Proposal][audience]" value="" id="ProposalAudience"/>

<div class="checkbox"><input type="checkbox" name="data[Proposal][audience][]" value="5-7" id="ProposalAudience57" /><label for="ProposalAudience57">5-7 years</label></div>

<div class="checkbox"><input type="checkbox" name="data[Proposal][audience][]" value="7-11" id="ProposalAudience711" /><label for="ProposalAudience711">7-11 years</label></div>

<div class="checkbox"><input type="checkbox" name="data[Proposal][audience][]" value="11-14" id="ProposalAudience1114" /><label for="ProposalAudience1114">11-14 years</label></div>

The code I'm using in my controller file to write to the database is as follows:

$arrAudience = $this->Session->read('form.data.audience');

$strAudience = implode($arrAudience);

$this->Session->write('form.data.audience', $strAudience);

$this->Proposal->save($currentSessionData);

But I get the following errors:

Warning (2): implode() [function.implode]: Argument must be an array [APP/Controller/ProposalsController.php, line 106]
Notice (8): Array to string conversion [CORE/Cake/Model/Datasource/DboSource.php, line 1009]


The SQL query dump has the word 'Array' where I'd expect my string to be.

Where am I going wrong? Should I be using something other than the basic PHP implode function?

Thanks for any help you can give.

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Mike Karthäuser
Director, Brightstorm Ltd.

1, Brewery Court
North Street
Bristol
BS3 1JS

mikek@brightstorm.co.uk
www.brightstorm.co.uk
+44(0) 7939252144
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