Model classnames are singular and CamelCased. Person, BigPerson, and ReallyBigPerson are all examples of conventional model names.
Table names corresponding to CakePHP models are plural and underscored. The underlying tables for the above mentioned models would be people, big_people, and really_big_people, respectively.
You can use the utility library "Inflector" to check the singular/plural of words. See the Inflector documentation for more information.
Field names with two or more words are underscored like, first_name.
Foreign keys in hasMany, belongsTo or hasOne relationships are recognized by default as the (singular) name of the related table followed by _id. So if a Baker hasMany Cake, the cakes table will refer to the bakers table via a baker_id foreign key. For a multiple worded table like category_types, the foreign key would be category_type_id.
Join tables, used in hasAndBelongsToMany (HABTM) relationships between models should be named after the model tables they will join in alphabetical order (apples_zebras rather than zebras_apples).
All tables with which CakePHP models interact (with the exception of join tables), require a singular primary key to uniquely identify each row. If you wish to model a table which does not have a single-field primary key, such as the rows of your posts_tags join table, CakePHP's convention is that a single-field primary key is added to the table.
CakePHP does not support composite primary keys. If you want to directly manipulate your join table data, use direct query calls or add a primary key to act on it as a normal model. E.g.:
CREATE TABLE posts_tags (
id INT(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
post_id INT(10) NOT NULL,
tag_id INT(10) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY(id));
Rather than using an auto-increment key as the primary key, you may also use char(36). Cake will then use a unique 36 character uuid (String::uuid) whenever you save a new record using the Model::save method.
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