My DB server doesn't support innodb engine, so I can't use Foreign key
costraints at DB level.
How can I assure referential intergrity? Can I do this using cakephp model,
how?
As long as you define your model associations properly, you should be ok. If you're worried about orphan records when deleting records, you can set 'dependent'=> true
in your associations.
http://book.cakephp.org/view/1039/Associations-Linking-Models-Together#hasMany-1043
I'm using myISAM engine on my tables with cakePHP, had no problems so far =).
foreign keys are defined in model like this:
// this is a property of Post Model
var $belongsTo = array(
'PostCategory' => array(
'className' => 'PostCategory',
'foreignKey' => 'post_category_id',
'conditions' => '',
'fields' => '',
'order' => ''
)
);
this means that current model is associated with PostCategory model using post_category_id column as a foreign key.