seguer / cakephp-formsession-plugin

FormSession is a CakePHP plugin/component that allows you to save model data and error validation stuff to Session, saving and retrieving it across actions/controllers.

FormSession Component (packaged as a plugin)

===============================================================================
Installation:
===============================================================================
- Clone from github : in your plugin directory type:
git clone git://github.com/seguer/cakephp-formsession-plugin.git form_session

- Add as a git submodule from your root directory type:
git submodule add git://github.com/seguer/cakephp-formsession-plugin.git app/plugins/form_session
git submodule init
git submodule update

- Download an archive from github and extract it in `app/plugins/form_session`

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Usage:
===============================================================================
In the controller that serves the form:

var $components = array('FormSession.FormSession');

function action()
{
	$this->FormSession->read('Model');
}


In the controller or action that the form posts to:

function update()
{
	if (!empty($this->data))
	{
		$this->Model->create();
		if ($this->Model->save($this->data))
		{
			//save success
			//redirect to wherever
		}
		else
		{
			//validation error, write the data to FormSession
			$this->FormSession->write('Model');
			//redirect somewhere?
		}
	}
	//redirect somewhere?
}

===============================================================================
Advanced Features
===============================================================================
The above example is the basic usage of the component - initialize it normally and call its methods, passing in a Model's name.

However, FormSession defaults a model to be used if you don't pass anything in. For example if you have a CommentsController,
the Comment model will be used as the default model, unless in the $uses var, Comment is not the first model.

Example:

<?php 
//this results in a default model of Comment. Works if $uses is null or an empty array
class CommentsController extends AppController {
		var $uses = array('Comment');
?>

<?php
//this results in a default model of Post because it is the first model listed. This shouldn't really be done anyway.
class CommentsController extends AppController {
		var $uses = array('Post', 'Comment');
?>


You can also initialise FormSession to use a specific model as its default, and this doesn't even have to be loaded
directly on the Controller - but it does have to be accessible somehow, through a model relation. For example, if your
CommentsController only used Comment, but Comment belongsTo Post, you can access Post by doing
-----
$this->Comment->Post
-----
FormSession is smart enough to find these links through the loaded models in your controller, but will die with an error
if it can't find the model (if the model you are trying to use is completely unrelated to any loaded models).