Gavin Williams

I’d run into a problem in the Zend Table where when inserting data from a form, if a field didn’t exist in the database ZF would crap out with an exception. Having to unset posted variables I didn’t need, meant more typing, more typing meant more unnecessary code.

I found the easiest way to get around this is by overriding the insert method in my extended App_Db_Table_Abstract class. Here’s what my new insert method looks like.

public function insert($data, $skip = true){

    if($skip === true){
        $oldData = $data;
        $data = array();
        foreach($this->info('metadata') as $key => $value){
            if(isset($oldData[$key])){
                $data[$key] = $oldData[$key];
            }
        }
    }

    parent::insert($data);

}

The method takes two parameters, the data ($data) and a Boolean value ($skip). Skip defaults to true, so I don’t need to add this parameter to every call to insert, it’s also there in case I don’t want to skip my data.

It then iterates through the table meta data, which contains the field names for the table, checks to see if the key exists in the data from the form. If the field exists in the array then it’s added to the new data array.

Finally the parent insert method is called, bobs your uncle.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve subclassed some of the Zend classes, this allows me to override methods to my liking.