Working with Phalcon relations

Question

I've started to learn programming with Phalcon a few weeks ago and I have a question about the relationships, which are used for 'easy' programming.

The setup I've got a table full with products (Products model obvious), a table with categories (Category model) and a table with subcategories (Subcategory model). A product CAN be in a category or a subcategory (depends if the category has subcategories).

So, I've currently got 4 models
- Product (matches with id)
- Category (matches with id)
- Subcategory (matches with id)
- CatRelation (used for linking the products)

The CatRelation table contains a:
- productId
- satId
- subId

Where the catId/subId cannot be filled both.

So, when I'm in a category, I want to use the model to fetch all the products within that category by catId. The same goes for the subcategory.

My current models look like this:

class Product extends ModelBase
{
    public $id;
    public $name;

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getSource()
    {
        return "products";
    }

    public function initialize()
    {
        $this->hasMany("id", "CatRelation", "productId");
    }
}

class Category extends ModelBase
{
    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getSource()
    {
        return "categories";
    }

    public function initialize()
    {
        $this->hasMany("id", "CatRelation", "catId");
    }
} 

class Subcategory extends ModelBase
{
    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getSource()
    {
        return "subcategories";
    }

    public function initialize()
    {
        $this->hasMany("id", "CatRelation", "subId");
    }
} 

class CatRelation extends ModelBase
{
    public $id;

    public $productId;
    public $catId;
    public $subId;

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getSource()
    {
        return "productCatRelations";
    }

    public function initialize()
    {
        $this->belongsTo("productId", "Product", "id");
        $this->belongsTo("catId", "Category", "id");
        $this->belongsTo("subId", "Subcategory", "id");
    }
} 

I hope someone out there is willing to help me out! :) If you have some suggestions, please suggest them! I'm still learning, so that's only helping me.

Cheers.

Answer 1

I never worked with belongsTo, but can you try a many-to-many relationship in Category Model.

$this->hasManyToMany("id", "CatRelation", "catId",
"productId", "Product", "id",['alias' => 'Product']);

Then, if you want to get all the products for each category, try:

$rows = Category::query()->execute();

foreach($rows as $row)
{
    var_dump($row->Product->toArray());
}