hasMany

Usage

A hasMany relationship is a one-to-many relationship. For instance, a User may have multiple Posts.

// User.cfc
component extends="quick.models.BaseEntity" accessors="true" {

    function posts() {
       return hasMany( "Post" );
    }

}

The first value passed to hasMany is a WireBox mapping to the related entity.

Quick determines the foreign key of the relationship based on the entity name and key values. In this case, the Post entity is assumed to have a userId foreign key. You can override this by passing a foreign key in as the second argument:

return hasMany( "Post", "FK_userID" );

If your parent entity does not use id as its primary key, or you wish to join the child entity to a different column, you may pass a third argument to the belongsTo method specifying your parent table's custom key.

return hasMany( "Post", "FK_userID", "relatedPostId" );

The inverse of hasMany is belongsTo.

// Post.cfc
component extends="quick.models.BaseEntity" accessors="true" {

    function user() {
        return belongsTo( "User" );
    }

}

Inserting & Updating

There are two ways to add an entity to a hasMany relationship. Both mirror the insert API for entities.

save

You can call the save method on the relationship passing in an entity to relate.

var post = getInstance( "Post" ).create( {
    "title" = "My Post",
    "body" = "Hello, world!"
} );

var user = getInstance( "User" ).findOrFail( 1 );

user.posts().save( post );
// OR use the keyValue
user.posts().save( post.keyValue() );

This will add the User entity's id as a foreign key in the Post and save the Post to the database.

Note: the save method is called on the posts relationship, not the getPosts collection.

saveMany

You can also add many entities in a hasMany relationship by calling saveMany. This method takes an array of key values or entities and will associate each of them with the base entity.

create

Use the create method to create and save a related entity directly through the relationship.

var user = getInstance( "User" ).findOrFail( 1 );

user.posts().create( {
    "title" = "My Post",
    "body" = "Hello, world!"
} );

This example will have the same effect as the previous example.

Removing

Removing a hasMany relationship is handled in two ways: either by using the dissociate method on the belongsTo side of the relationship or by deleting the belongsTo side of the relationship.

Relationship Setter

You can also influence the associated entities by calling "set" & relationshipName and passing in an array of entities or key values.

var postA = getInstance( "Post" ).findOrFail( 2 );
user.setPosts( [ postA, 4 ] );

After running this code, this user would only have two posts, the posts with ids 2 and 4. Any other posts would now be disassociated with this user. Likely your database will be guarding against creating these orphan records. Admittedly, this method is not as likely to be used as the others, but it does exist if it solves your use case.

Signature

Returns a HasMany relationship between this entity and the entity defined by relationName.

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