Serialize a POST array so that Cake PHP can insert into MySQL database

Question

It's a hard one to explain as my code half works.

Basically this is what I have:

public function add() {
    $this->set('branchingQuestions', $this->BranchingQuestion->find('all'));

    if ($this->request->is('post')) {
        $_POST['data']['Job']['branchingQuestions'] = mysql_escape_string(serialize($_POST['data']['Job']['branchingQuestions']));
        var_dump($_POST['data']['Job']);
        //die;
        $this->Job->create();
        if ($this->Job->save($this->request->data)) {
            $this->Session->setFlash(__('The job has been saved.'));
            return $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
        } else {
            $this->Session->setFlash(__('The job could not be saved. Please, try again.'));
        }
    }
}

This is in a Cake PHP Controller. Most of that code has been generated through Bake.

Anyway in my POST array is another array under the name of branchingQuestions and because its an array I get an error when inserting as you'd expect. However from the var_dump I get that the array has successfully serialized and is now a string just the same as the rest of the contents of the POST is. So it should work.

However from testing a couple of things it seems that CakePHP doesn't even realise that I have updated the array with the serialize line. It runs as if that never happened even though my var_Dump suggests otherwise.

['data']['job'] contains all my strings and int's such as ['data']['job']['title'] and they get inserted fine, but to test my theory I also changed ['title'] like this:

$_POST['data']['Job']['title'] = 120;

Which should of made SQL give an error as title is a string. But it didn't even change title was still "test" in my table.

branchingQuestions is posted like so:

<select name='data[Job][branchingQuestions][question" + branchCount + "]'

I have a dynamic form that you can add more select boxes to when you need, thats why I have a variable in the question part. All this works ok, the var_dump gives me what I expected.

Leonardo · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-07 16:11:28Z

1

You actually have to edit $this->request->data array instead of the $_POST array.

answered Nov 7, 2013 at 16:11

Leonardo

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1 Comment

Nikolai5 Over a year ago

Thank you it worked. I didn't realise that there was a difference between using $_POST and $this->request->data. As I haven't been using html helpers in the view but that works fine so I just assumed. Anyway thanks again, the obvious things always allude me.

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