In part one of this article we saw how to embed forms in a one-to-one relationship. But I often run into a situation where I want to edit a parent model, it’s children models, and maybe add a new child model while I’m at it, greedy I know, but isn’t that the reason why we use the admin generator. Anyway in this article we will examine the one-to-many relationship.

Before we get started here’s a sneak peak of the CategoryForm after the modifications to be done.

Files need for this article

• sfWidgetFormInputDelete

Ok, lets get started, consider the following schema:

category:
    _attributes: { phpName: Category }
    id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', primaryKey: true, autoIncrement: true, required: true }
    name: { type: VARCHAR, size: '255', required: true }
    created_at: { type: TIMESTAMP, required: false }
    updated_at: { type: TIMESTAMP, required: false }
subcategory:
    _attributes: { phpName: Subcategory }
    id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', primaryKey: true, autoIncrement: true, required: true }
    name: { type: VARCHAR, size: '255', required: true }
    category_id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', required: true, foreignTable: category, foreignReference: id, onDelete: CASCADE, onUpdate: RESTRICT }
    created_at: { type: TIMESTAMP, required: false }
    updated_at: { type: TIMESTAMP, required: false }

Steps needed to achieve the required result

1. Modify the CategoryForm to include embedded forms for all available subcategories of the current category.
2. Modify the widget of the name field in the subcategory
3. Modify the CategoryForm to add a new blank subcategory form
4. Override the bind method of the sfForm class to skip saving and validating the new subcategory form if the name field was left blank
5. Remove fields from SubcategoryForm

Embedded forms for all available subcategories of the current category [step 1, 2, and 3]

// lib/forms/CategoryForm.class.php
public function configure() {

  // remove timestamps
  unset($this['created_at'], $this['updated_at']);

  // embed forms only when editing
  if (!$this->isNew()) {

    // embed all subcategory forms
    foreach ($this->getObject()->getSubcategorys() as $subcategory) {

    // create a new subcategory form for the current subcategory model object
    $subcategory_form = new SubcategoryForm($subcategory);

    // embed the subcategory form in the main category form
    $this->embedForm('subcategory'.$subcategory->getId(), $subcategory_form);

    // set a custom label for the embedded form
    $this->widgetSchema['subcategory'.$subcategory->getId()]->setLabel('Subcategory: '.$subcategory->getName());

    // change the name widget to sfWidgetFormInputDelete
    $this->widgetSchema['subcategory'.$subcategory->getId()]['name'] = new sfWidgetFormInputDelete(array(
    'url' => 'category/deleteSubcategory',      // required
    'model_id' => $subcategory->getId(),        // required
    'confirm' => 'Sure???',                     // optional
    ));

  }

  // create a new subcategory form for a new subcategory model object
  $subcategory_form = new SubcategoryForm();

  // embed the subcategory form in the main category form
  $this->embedForm('subcategory', $subcategory_form);

  // set a custom label for the embedded form
  $this->widgetSchema['subcategory']->setLabel('New Subcategory');

  }
}

Override the bind method

public function bind(array $taintedValues = null, array $taintedFiles = null) {

	// remove the embedded new form if the name field was not provided
	if (is_null($taintedValues['subcategory']['name']) || strlen($taintedValues['subcategory']['name']) === 0 ) {

		unset($this->embeddedForms['subcategory'], $taintedValues['subcategory']);

		// pass the new form validations
		$this->validatorSchema['subcategory'] = new sfValidatorPass();

	} else {

		// set the category of the new subcategory form object
		$this->embeddedForms['subcategory']->getObject()->setCategory($this->getObject());

	}

	// call parent bind method
	parent::bind($taintedValues, $taintedFiles);

}

Remove fields from SubcategoryForm

public function configure(){
  unset($this['created_at'], $this['updated_at'], $this['category_id']);
}

Now we create the action deleteSubcategory in category module

// apps/backend/modules/category/actions/actions.class.php
public function executeDeleteSubcategory(sfWebRequest $request) {
  $sub_category = SubcategoryPeer::retrieveByPk($request->getParameter('id'));
  $sub_category->delete();
  $this->redirect('@category_edit?id='.$sub_category->getCategory()->getId());
}

That’s it, I hop that you enjoyed this article.

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