This is just a quick post to show one way of recording who created and who last modified records in your db tables.

For each table you want to record this data for:

1) Add fields called ‘created_by’ and ‘modified_by’ to your database table structure.

2) Then in your models, add the relevant belongsTo associations:


var $belongsTo = array(
'CreatedBy' => array('className' => 'User', 'foreignKey' => 'created_by'),
'ModifiedBy' => array('className' => 'User', 'foreignKey' => 'modified_by'),
);


Replace ‘User’ with whatever your ‘User’ model is called, if not ‘User’.

Then, in your AppController’s beforeFilter, which is executed before every controller action in you application, you set a property of the default model loaded by the controller that you’re in:


function beforeFilter() {
/**
* If logged in, set the model property userId to logged in user's ID
**/
if ($userId = $this->Auth->user('id')) {
$this->{$this->modelClass}->userId = $userId;
}
}


e.g. lets say you’re in your PostsController’s add action, your AppController beforeFilter will know that $this->modelClass is actually the Post model.

This code assumes you’re using CakePHP 1.2′s Auth component, if not, replace this with some similar logic from your own authentication/authorisation system that will check a user is logged in and get their ID.

And finally, in your AppModel…


var $userId = null;
function beforeSave() {
parent::beforeSave();
/**
* If logged in, set the model data created_by & modified_by fields to logged in user's ID
**/
if ($this->userId) {
$this->set(array('modified_by' => $this->userId));
/**
* Add created_by field if creating a record
**/
if (!isset($this->data[$this->name]['id']) || !$this->id) {
$this->set(array('created_by' => $this->userId));
}
}
return true;
}


This code checks to see if the model’s userId property is set, and if so, set the model’s data property modified_by field key to the userId, and if the record has not yet been created, the created_by field key too.

Don’t forget to return true at the end, else saving will fail.

Thats it, CakePHP’s Model::save() does the rest.

Something like that anyway. You might want to wrap it up in a behavior.