In this blog posts I'll introduce you to the WhoDidIt Model Behavior for CakePHP!

Why I developed it

Building a CMS like application I wanted to keep track of:

• who did create a record
• who did modify it

possibly this has to be done automagically adding to fields in the DB table "created_by" an "modified_by"!

The most straigthforward solution was to develope a model behavior.

Where can I get it?

On my public repository for CakePHP snippets on GitHub@danfreak

How it works

First of all you need a table with two fields

• created_by
• modified_by

This can be a demo for MySQL:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `posts` ( 
   `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, 
   `content_news_category_id` int(2) NOT NULL, 
   `title` varchar(255) NOT NULL, 
   `content` text NOT NULL, 
   `on_cover` tinyint(1) unsigned default NULL, 
   `published` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL, 
   `publish_on` datetime default NULL, 
   `created_by` int(11) NOT NULL, 
   `modified_by` int(11) NOT NULL, 
   `created` datetime default NULL, 
   `modified` datetime default NULL, 
   `hits` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', 
   PRIMARY KEY  (`id`), 
   KEY `created_by` (`created_by`,`modified_by`), 
   KEY `published` (`published`), 
   KEY `publish_on` (`publish_on`) 
 ) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8; 

The created_by, modified_by fields must be of INT type.

The you need to attach the behavior to the model (or AppModel if you want all your models to actAs WhoDidIt)

example:

class Post extends AppModel { 
     var $name = 'Post';
     var $actsAs = array('WhoDidIt');
 
 } 

The above example uses the default settings:

• 'auth_session' the name of the Auth session default Auth
• 'user_model'  the name of the User model (default User)
• 'created_by_field' the name of the "created_by" field in DB (default 'created_by')
• 'modified_by_field'  the name of the "modified_by" field in DB (default 'modified_by')
• 'auto_bind'  automatically bind the model to the User model (see example below)

If you want to customize the settings simply specify them in the acts as:

class Post extends AppModel { 
     var $name = 'Post'; 
     var $actsAs = array('WhoDidIt'=>array('user_model'=>'MyUser',
                                            'created_by_field'=>'built_by',
                                            'modified_by_field'=>'affected_by'));
 
 }
 

The above example will override the default settings using:

• MyUser as User model instead of User
• built_by as "created_by" field in the DB table
• affected_by as "created_by" field in the DB table

By default the WhoDidIt Behavihor creates an association so that you can retrieve the creator/modifier detail and get a record structure as follows:

Array 
 (
 
     [Post] => Array 
         (
 
             [id] => 12 
             [content_news_category_id] => 1 
             [title] => example post title 
             [content] => example post content 
             [on_cover] => 1 
             [published] => 1 
             [publish_on] => 2009-02-28 13:04:00 
             [created_by] => 1 
             [modified_by] => 1 
             [created] => 2009-02-28 13:18:23 
             [modified] => 2009-02-28 13:18:23 
             [hits] => 0 
         )
 
 
   [CreatedBy] => Array 
         (
 
             [id] => 1 
             [nome] => Myname 
             [cognome] => Mysurname 
             [username] => danfreak 
             [email] => xxx@xxxxxxx.com 
             [password] => xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
             [group_id] => 1 
             [created] => 2008-12-01 00:00:00 
             [modified] => 2008-12-08 11:57:02 
             [activation] => 
         )
 
 
    [ModifiedBy] => Array 
         (
 
             [id] => 1 
             [nome] => Myname 
             [cognome] => Mysurname 
             [username] => danfreak 
             [email] => xxx@xxxxxxx.com 
             [password] => xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
             [group_id] => 1 
             [created] => 2008-12-01 00:00:00 
             [modified] => 2008-12-08 11:57:02 
             [activation] =>  
) 

If you don't want to create the above association on the fly, simply override the default settings on behavior binding as follows:

class Post extends AppModel { 
     var $name = 'Post';     var $actsAs = array('WhoDidIt'=>array('auto_bind'=>false); } 

I hope you will enjoy the WhoDidIt behavior!

Bake ON!

Daniel

 

Further Resources:

• documentation about behaviors in CakePHP

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