A CakePHP plugin for Counter Cache functionality for HABTM associations

Provides Counter Cache and Under Counter Cache (for hierarchical models) behavior with scope for HABTM associations e.g. Post habtm Tag,Category where Tag has a post_count and Category is a hierarchical and has post_count and under_post_count fields.

Under Counter Cache is a Counter Cache that counts all distinct records assigned to that node explicitly, or any of it's children. This is useful for figuring out how many posts are assigned to a category of one of it's children, which you can use to print out a nested list of categories with the number of posts next to them.

Usage example:

class Post extends AppModel {
  var $name = 'Post';
  var $actsAs = array('HabtmCounterCache');
  var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array('Category', 'Tag');
}

• CakePHP 1.3+ (I think) (Works with CakePHP v2.0)

git submodule add git://github.com/neilcrookes/CakePHP-HABTM-Counter-Cache-Plugin.git app/plugins/habtm_counter_cache

or download from http://github.com/neilcrookes/CakePHP-HABTM-Counter-Cache-Plugin

Add the counter cache fields to your database tables, e.g. for a tags table, add an integer field, default 0, called 'post_count'

Attach the behavior to the model whose records you're counting, e.g. your Post model (see configuration below for examples)

Configuration is very flexible, for example:

• Just attach and it will do counter caching for all hatbm associated models that have the counterCache field. E.g.

  var $actsAs = array('HabtmCounterCache');

• Specify counterCache, counterScope and/or underCounterCache keys in the configuration options when you attach the behavior for these settings to be applied to all habtm associations. E.g.

  var $actsAs = array( 'HabtmCounterCache' => array( 'counterScope' => array('active' => 1) ), );

• Introduce habtm association specific counterCache and counterScope settings by using the habtm alias as the key E.g.

  var $actsAs = array( 'HabtmCounterCache' => array( 'Tag' => array( 'counterCache' => 'weight' ) ), );

Copyright Neil Crookes 2011

The MIT License