cfWheels - creating an object related objects - coldfusion

Question

I have a new model myModel that I'm creating with a one-to-many relationship to a bunch of sub-models mySubModel that are being created at the same time.
when I try to save the model:
<cfset myModel=model("myModel").new(params.mymodel)>
<cfset myModel.save()>
only the model part gets saved, the items inside params.myModel.mySubModels do not get created. The models have their relations setup and I can get it to pull the data in the same format out of myModel with the right include.
I could save each of the models separately, but I'm worried about that causing problems or just creating needles lines of code if cfwheels is able to handle this already. I would have to save the initial model and then save the additional sub-models, and if there is an error, delete the model and other sub-models that have already been written to the database.

Answer 1

As long as the main object relates to sub-objects with hasMany, Nested Properties will be invaluable to you.
In the main model:
function init() {
hasMany("subModels");
nestedProperties("subModels");
}
Then a call to save() in the controller runs saves on the parent object and all of its associated children.
function create() {
myModel = model("myModel").new(params.myModel);
// This call to `save()` saves associated children represented in `params.myModel` too
if (myModel.save()) {
redirectTo(route="myRoute", success="The model was saved successfully.");
}
else {
flashInsert(error="There was an error saving the model.");
renderPage(action="new");
}
}
If you can comment more about your particular data structure, I can help you with the form part. Calling something "subModel" is only going to get us so far in this discussion.

Answer 2

I'm looking at the docs here: http://cfwheels.org/docs/1-1/chapter/associations specifically, the section related to "hasMany()". I see several functions there for creating new child records based on the parent record, but none that will create multiple at a single go. At best, it seems like this is what you could do:
<cfset myModel=model("myModel").create(params.mymodel)>
<cfloop array="#params.mymodel.mySubModels#" index="thisSubModel">
<cfset myModel.createMySubModel(thisSubModel)>
</cfloop>
Which really doesn't seem that bad.

Answer 3

I would define two methods in the model's init, like this:
validate(methods="validateChildren");
afterCreate(methods="createChildren");
validateChildren would run validation for each child model (defined in corresponding models, of course), consider using valid for this purpose -- it fires the validation without saving data.
Use syntax like this to pass the error to the parent model level:
addError(property="someproperty", message="Something wrong happened");
Then if there are not errors createChildren method would create all needed sub-models, using params to override the safe defaults. Personally I would not use looping over params because relying on external data is not so good idea and can mess the stuff.