CakePHP: add fields to form (dynamically)

Question

I am trying to dynamically add fields to my CakePHP form, but it seems that each method I used had its own downsides which I couldn\'t fix. Here is what I tried:

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Answer 1

I'm not sure I can give you a full answer to your question, but hopefully I can give you a couple ideas.

I found myself in a similar situation when trying to create an admin system for polls.

Each Poll had many PollOptions and I wanted to make it possible to dynamically add as many poll options as needed on my polls/admin_edit page.

I managed this with CakePHP's built-in functionality plus a bit of Javascript.

When building the form in the admin_edit view, I first put in the Poll fields and under that I added this:

data['PollOption'])) {
    $i = 0;
    foreach ($this->data['PollOption'] as $opt) {
        echo $form->hidden("PollOption.$i.id");
        echo $form->input("PollOption.$i.name", array('label' => "Option " . ($i + 1)));
        $i++;
    }
}
?>

$this->data was set in PollsController. If the Poll already had related PollOptions, they were also included in $this->data. Also, if the form had already been submitted and there were validation errors, all the needed PollOption fields were built again when the page displayed because they were still in $this->data from the controller.

So that took care of making sure I always had the fields I needed in the view.

When the form was submitted, I attempted to save the data with a simple

$this->Poll->saveAll($this->data, array('atomic' => false, 'validate' => 'first'));

(You can check the CakePHP API or docs if you're not sure of the above syntax)

I used Javascript (jQuery) to dynamically add the PollOption fields:

$('#add-option-button').click(function(event){
    var optionCount = $('#poll-options > div').size() + 1;
    var inputHtml = '
Option ' + optionCount
        + '
';
    event.preventDefault();
    $('#poll-options').append(inputHtml);
});

You mentioned you were doing this yourself, but you shouldn't have any trouble with it if you don't try to use the Security component on the form.

Hope this helps point you in the right direction, or maybe give you some ideas.