Undesired notice in Model.php _prepareUpdateFields for counterCache

[cuppett]

For some models, I aggregate associations programmatically through constructors and the class hierarchy like this:

    public function __construct($id = false, $table = null, $ds = null) {
        parent::__construct($id, $table, $ds);
        $this->belongsTo['Post'] = array('className' => 'Post', 
                    'foreignKey' => 'parent_id');
    }

This can lead to some noisy notice messages in Model.php:

Notice (8): Undefined index: counterCache [CORE\Cake\Model\Model.php, line 2109]

It can be worked around in the definition by including counterCache and setting false explicitly:

    public function __construct($id = false, $table = null, $ds = null) {
        parent::__construct($id, $table, $ds);
        $this->belongsTo['Post'] = array('className' => 'Post', 
                     'foreignKey' => 'parent_id', 'counterCache' => false);
    }

However, the framework could catch this more elegantly with an isset check:

    protected function _prepareUpdateFields($data) {
        $foreignKeys = array();
        foreach ($this->belongsTo as $assoc => $info) {
            if (isset($info['counterCache'] && $info['counterCache']) {
                $foreignKeys[$assoc] = $info['foreignKey'];
            }
        }

[dereuromark]

Did you try switching the order?

    $this->belongsTo['Post'] = ...
    parent::__construct($id, $table, $ds);

That would assert that the counterCache key as well as others are properly set up through the constructor - as it is meant to work.
You should not hook into it this way, IMO, using attributes directly (at least not without fully declaring them). It fails as expected.

If you need to do it manually afterwards, the bindModel() method would be the way to go.

[cuppett]

Sure, let me give a couple things a try. Thanks!

[cuppett]

Both those work. The parent constructors should fire first (in my opinion), but this style works nice too:

        parent::__construct($id, $table, $ds);
        $this->bindModel(array('belongsTo' =>
            array('Post' => array(
                'className' => 'Post', 'foreignKey' => 'parent_id')
            )
        ));

You can close or add the extra safety check anyway. Either works for me.

Thanks!

[dereuromark]

Closing as there is an open PR to continue the discussion: #3470 .

Thank you for your quick reply. We will look into it.