Welcome to the Cookbook

Creating virtual fields is straightforward and easy, interacting with virtual fields can be done through a few different methods.

Model::hasField()

Model::hasField() has been updated so that it can return true if the model has a virtualField with the correct name. By setting the second parameter of hasField to true, virtualFields will also be checked when checking if a model has a field. Using the example field above,

$this->User->hasField('name'); // Will return false, as there is no concrete field called name
$this->User->hasField('name', true); // Will return true as there is a virtual field called name

1. $this->User->hasField('name'); // Will return false, as there is no concrete field called name
2. $this->User->hasField('name', true); // Will return true as there is a virtual field called name

Model::isVirtualField()

This method can be used to check if a field/column is a virtual field or a concrete field. Will return true if the column is virtual.

$this->User->isVirtualField('name'); //true
$this->User->isVirtualField('first_name'); //false

1. $this->User->isVirtualField('name'); //true
2. $this->User->isVirtualField('first_name'); //false

Model::getVirtualField()

This method can be used to access the SQL expression that comprises a virtual field. If no argument is supplied it will return all virtual fields in a Model.

$this->User->getVirtualField('name'); //returns 'CONCAT(User.first_name, ' ', User.last_name)'

1. $this->User->getVirtualField('name'); //returns 'CONCAT(User.first_name, ' ', User.last_name)'

Model::find() and virtual fields

As stated earlier Model::find() will treat virtual fields much like any other field in a model. The value of a virtual field will be placed under the model's key in the resultset. Unlike the behavior of calculated fields in 1.2

$results = $this->User->find('first');

// results contains the following
array(
    'User' => array(
        'first_name' => 'Mark',
        'last_name' => 'Story',
        'name' => 'Mark Story',
        //more fields.
    )
);

1. $results = $this->User->find('first');
2. // results contains the following
3. array(
4. 'User' => array(
5. 'first_name' => 'Mark',
6. 'last_name' => 'Story',
7. 'name' => 'Mark Story',
8. //more fields.
9. )
10. );

Pagination and virtual fields

Since virtual fields behave much like regular fields when doing find's, Controller::paginate() has been updated to allow sorting by virtual fields.