Thank you Jeremy. This is a great, concise description and the example code
helps a lot to see the difference.
{c}
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 4:52 PM, jeremyharris <[email protected]> wrote:
> The best advice is to keep things DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). Generally,
> this results in thin controllers (small controller functions) and fat
> models (more methods on the models). Any functionality that you will find
> yourself reusing across different controllers that appropriately relate to
> a model should be on that model, instead.
>
> As an example (typical blog example).
>
> //posts_controller
> function edit($id) {
> // check if user is the creator of this post and is therefore allowed to
> edit
> $post = $this->Post->read(null, $id);
> if (empty($post) || $post['Post']['created_by'] !=
> $this->Auth->user('id')) {
> //redirect
> return;
> }
> }
>
> function delete($id) {
> // check if user has rights to delete
> $post = $this->Post->read(null, $id);
> if (empty($post) || $post['Post']['created_by'] !=
> $this->Auth->user('id')) {
> //redirect
> return;
> }
> }
>
> Your controller would be considered "fat" because you duplicated code and
> this is logic that belongs in the model. Instead, something like this looks
> better:
>
> // post model
> function userOwnsPost($userId, $postId) {
> return $this->hasAny(array(
> 'id' => $postId,
> 'created_by' => $userId
> ));
> }
>
> // posts controller
> function edit($id) {
> if (!$this->Post->userOwnsPost($this->Auth->user('id'), $id)) {
> //redirect
> }
> }
>
> function delete($id) {
> if (!$this->Post->userOwnsPost($this->Auth->user('id'), $id)) {
> //redirect
> }
> }
>
> Perhaps not the *best* example, but you get the idea. This code is also
> much easier to test. If you ever change the behavior of userOwnsPost, it
> will change across the app. It's also very specific, which makes writing
> tests really easy.
>
> If you find yourself writing long, complex find conditions and using them
> over and over again, they probably belong in model. Remember, many small
> functions are easier to test and predict the outcome than large functions.
>
> Another example might be finding a list of posts that belong to a tag. You
> would place this in your Post or Tag model, and might call it in
> /posts/index, /pages/home, /posts/view,
> /users/posts_in_tags_i_have_created, etc.
>
> For small apps, it may not be necessary to move these functions around!
> But, I'd say the more you have in models the better, even if only for
> testing's sake. It's easier to find out what went wrong when your methods
> are smaller and very specific. Controller methods are usually less specific
> than model methods.
>
> Hope that clears it up a bit.
>
> --
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>
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