Wow, this was a really descriptive and helpful writeup, but
unfortunately the conversations modified timestamp doesn't get update,
as seen here:
[Conversation] => Array
(
[id] => 4cfe98f6-d44c-4722-93ac-70d9c458e2c9
[user_id] => 4cfd90f8-ffbc-418c-bc96-68b0c458e2c9
[messages_count] => 3
[active] => 1
[created] => 2010-12-07 15:28:38
[modified] => 2010-12-07 15:28:38
On Dec 8, 3:39 pm, cricket <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 12:26 PM, FahDoos <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Tried searching for answers but can't find any good.
>
> > To keep it basic, I have a conversations model, which has a one to
> > many relationship with messages. In the conversations view i'd like to
> > list each conversation sorted by the date of the most recent message,
> > and display the body of that message. High level help would be fine,
> > and code examples a bonus.
>
> > What i've tried so far:
>
> > 1) creating an hasOne relationship to the messages model. This just
> > results in the conversation getting duplicated for every related
> > message it has.
>
> > 2) created an additional hasMany relationship to messages model with a
> > limit of 1 sorted by date desc. This sorta works, but the single
> > related message ends up in an array with one index of 0.
>
> > I know there has to be a more graceful solution for this. I'm an
> > experienced php programmer who's new to cake... so far really loving
> > it, but just getting bit in the a$$ with how to best leverage cake in
> > some instances.
>
> The best solution I can think of would be to use both
> ContainableBehavior[1] and counterCache[2]. The first is to make it
> simple to order & limit the associated Message. The latter, to order
> the Conversations (I think--I'll explain below).
>
> First, the code ...
>
> Message model:
>
> public $belongsTo = array(
> 'Conversation' => array(
> 'counterCache' => 'messages_count'
> )
> );
>
> Conversation model:
> public $hasMany = array(
> 'Message'
> );
>
> ConversationsController:
>
> public $paginate = array(
> 'Conversation' => array(
> 'fields' => array('Conversation.*'),
> 'order => array(
> 'Conversation.modified' => 'DESC'
> ),
> 'limit' => <number conversations per page>,
> 'contain' => array(
> 'Message' => array(
> 'order' => array(
> 'Message.created' => 'DESC'
> ),
> 'limit' => 1
> )
> )
> )
> );
>
> (You could also create an entry here for Message, so that you could
> paginate all Messages for a particular Conversation in the view
> action.)
>
> Containable allows us to both order & limit the associated model
> records, so order on the created column and limit to a single record.
> Normal stuff. That's step 1.
>
> Ordering the Conversations, however, is done on the modified column.
> This is where I'm straying into untested waters, but I'm pretty sure
> it should work. We use counterCache by specifying it--in the model
> whose records we want to count--as a key in the association array for
> the model whose table will hold the count. So, here it's included in
> Message's $belongsTo entry for Conversation. Then, we need a
> messages_count column in the conversations table.
>
> Now, you didn't ask to count messages per conversation but this is
> where the trick lies (I think). And, you get a handy count of Messages
> per Conversation as a bonus.
>
> Cake will automatically set the values of DATETIME columns named
> created and modified. I'm (mostly) sure that the modified column will
> be updated when the counterCache column--messages_count--is. So, this
> could be used to paginate Conversations by their most recent Message.
> I think. I can certainly see why the Cake devs might have preferred to
> inhibit updating the modified column when updating a counterCache
> column because this would be undesirable to some people. Anyways, I'd
> check the code myself and/or build a test as I'm really curious now,
> but I'd better quit procrastinating and get backto work.
>
> [1]http://book.cakephp.org/view/1323/Containable
> [2]http://book.cakephp.org/view/1033/counterCache-Cache-your-count
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