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copied!<h2>Use meaningful table names</h2> <p>Based on your requirements you can name the table that logs views for example "post_views" (i.e. the viewing of a post by a user):</p> <pre><code>tbl_post_views -id -user_id -post_id </code></pre> <p>If <code>tbl_</code> isn't a prefix - remove it be conventional.</p> <p>Therefore there would be a model named PostView belonging to both post and user:</p> <pre><code>class PostView extends AppModel { public $belongsTo = array('Post', 'User'); } </code></pre> <h2>Don't use your view action to track a view</h2> <p>Most likely the current intention is to implement something like this:</p> <pre><code>class PostsController extends AppController { public $uses = array('Post', 'PostView'); public function view($id) { $this->PostView->save(array('user_id' => $this->Auth->user('id'), 'post_id' => $id)); $data = $this->Post->findById($id); $this->set(compact('data')); } } </code></pre> <p>It's a better idea to <em>not</em> do that. Recording the view in the controller code has two significant-ish problems:</p> <ol> <li>It's recording generating a view, not the user seeing it (not necessarily the same thing)</li> <li>It interferes with caching (either in php or a user's browser)</li> </ol> <h2>Use an image beacon</h2> <p>Instead of recording a view when the request is made, include an "image beacon" in the rendered output:</p> <pre><code>// end of file View/Posts/view.ctp echo $this->Html->image(array('action' => 'viewed', $postId), array('class' => 'beacon')); </code></pre> <p>And in your posts controller - record that the post has been viewed, and output a valid image (otherwise there will be an error reported by the user's browser) with appropriate headers to never cache the response:</p> <pre><code>class PostsController extends AppController { ... public function viewed($id) { $this->PostView->save(array('user_id' => $this->Auth->user('id'), 'post_id' => $id)); $this->response->disableCache(); $this->response->file('webroot/img/1px.gif'); // a 1px gif return $this->response; } } </code></pre> <p>In this way, irrespective of how the user gets to read the content, there is a record that the user viewed the relevant page.</p>

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