hasManyCheckBox()

Signature

hasManyCheckBox() — returns string

Available in: controller Category: Form Association Functions

Description

The hasManyCheckBox() helper generates the correct form elements for managing a hasMany or many-to-many association. It creates checkboxes for linking records together (e.g., a Book with many Authors). Note: Pass any additional arguments like class, rel, and id, and the generated tag will also include those values as HTML attributes.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
objectName	string	yes	—	Name of the variable containing the parent object to represent with this form field.
association	string	yes	—	Name of the association set in the parent object to represent with this form field.
keys	string	yes	—	Primary keys associated with this form field. Note that these keys should be listed in the order that they appear in the database table.
label	string	no	—	The label text to use in the form control.
labelPlacement	string	no	—	Whether to place the label before, after, or wrapped around the form control. Label text placement can be controlled using aroundLeft or aroundRight.
prepend	string	no	—	String to prepend to the form control. Useful to wrap the form control with HTML tags.
append	string	no	—	String to append to the form control. Useful to wrap the form control with HTML tags.
prependToLabel	string	no	—	String to prepend to the form control’s label. Useful to wrap the form control with HTML tags.
appendToLabel	string	no	—	String to append to the form control’s label. Useful to wrap the form control with HTML tags.
errorElement	string	no	—	HTML tag to wrap the form control with when the object contains errors.
errorClass	string	no	—	The class name of the HTML tag that wraps the form control when there are errors.
encode	any	no	true	Use this argument to decide whether the output of the function should be encoded in order to prevent Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Set it to true to encode all relevant output for the specific HTML element in question (e.g. tag content, attribute values, and URLs). For HTML elements that have both tag content and attribute values you can set this argument to attributes to only encode attribute values and not tag content.

Examples

1. Basic usage (Books -> Authors)

// Loop through all authors and render checkboxes for associating them with the current book
<cfloop query="authors">
    #hasManyCheckBox(
        objectName="book",
        association="bookAuthors",
        keys="#book.key()#,#authors.id#",
        label=authors.fullName
    )#
</cfloop>

2. Custom label placement

// Place the label after the checkbox instead of before
<cfloop query="categories">
    #hasManyCheckBox(
        objectName="post",
        association="postCategories",
        keys="#post.key()#,#categories.id#",
        label=categories.name,
        labelPlacement="after"
    )#
</cfloop>

3. Wrapping checkboxes in extra HTML (prepend/append)

// Use prepend and append to wrap checkboxes in a <div> with a custom class
<cfloop query="tags">
    #hasManyCheckBox(
        objectName="article",
        association="articleTags",
        keys="#article.key()#,#tags.id#",
        label=tags.name,
        prepend='<div class="tag-option">',
        append='</div>'
    )#
</cfloop>