Hello, I would like to get an advice on how to build an application with CakePHP where there are multiple customers (companies) using the application and each have their own database, but also some common tables in another database. Let me explain the database structure:
Tables in common database: - Users - Companies - Common settings - ... Tables in company specific database: - Users extra profile data - Company employees - ... So all users register to the application and the basic information is stored in a table in the common database. The application lists companies that are available. When users goes to some specific company page for the first time, they need to add extra profile data that the company wants. This data is stored to the company database. So I have couple questions. 1. Can I link tables between database configs? E.g. if you look at the tables above, the users extra profile data table in company database have user_id foreign key what is the ID of the user in Users table in common database. Same goes for the company employees table. It has a user_id foreign key, all employees are just some users with extra fields in that table and employee id. 2. How to automate the database table selection? I briefly checked this article: http://recurser.com/articles/2007/06/04/multiple-dbs-in-cakephp/ That seems to work for me also to some extent. I can adapt that information and then have two database configurations in app/config/ database.php. One config for the common database that never changes and then another config what uses the system from the above article to make the database selection. Does someone have better idea? But the more important question for the database table selection is that how to know what database to select. The article selects the database via user info, but in my application, users are not tied to some specific database. I was going to do it with subdomains. The application would check what subdomain is used and then find the database for that subdomain. It would work all ok, but I need to build an installation system to the application what can be used to add companies easily online. So I'd need to make it add the subdomain also and vhost to apache and restart apache. I don't like the idea of having to restart apache every time a company is added. So I'd like to use the first part of the url instead. There would be urls like this: www.domain.com/company1/home www.domain.com/company2/home .... So what I'm thinking (without knowing CakePHP capabilities) is to hack app/webroot/index.php and take the company part out from the $url and store it to session and read it from there when it's time to select the database. That way the application would select the correct database based on the url. But it requires modifications to the app/ webroot/index.php and there might be a better way to do this. So is there? :) Could I for example extend the CakePHP dispatcher what would take the first part from the url out and store it somewhere and then use the rest of the url normally to navigate to the controller etc? or...? Thanks in advance if you took the time to read all this :) Sorry for the lengthy post. Oh and environment is: Apache HTTPD 2.2.11 MySQL 5.1.33 PHP 5.2.9 CakePHP 1.2.3.8166 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CakePHP" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
