CakePHP counterCache joining irrelevant tables to update counter - mysql

Question

I have a User model and a Message model.
The Message model is linked to the User model twice like this:
public $belongsTo = array(
'UserSender' => array(
'className' => 'User',
'foreignKey' => 'sender_id',
'counterCache' => array(
'messages_sent_count' => array(
'is_deleted' => FALSE
)
)
),
'UserRecipient' => array(
'className' => 'User',
'foreignKey' => 'recipient_id',
'counterCache' => array(
'messages_received_count' => array(
'is_deleted' => FALSE
),
'messages_unread_count' => array(
'is_deleted' => FALSE,
'is_read' => FALSE
)
)
),
'Operator' => array(
'className' => 'Operator',
'foreignKey' => 'operator_id'
)
);
Besides the User model, the Message model also $belongsTo the Operator model. The Operator model is irrelevant to the message count for the users, but its table is still being joined in the count query, as debug shows:
'query' => 'SELECT COUNT(*) AS `count` FROM `database`.`messages` AS `Message` LEFT JOIN `database`.`operators` AS `Operator` ON (`Message`.`operator_id` = `Operator`.`id`) LEFT JOIN `database`.`users` AS `UserSender` ON (`Message`.`sender_id` = `UserSender`.`id`) LEFT JOIN `database`.`users` AS `UserRecipient` ON (`Message`.`recipient_id` = `UserRecipient`.`id`) WHERE `Message`.`is_deleted` = '0' AND `Message`.`sender_id` = 389',
'params' => array(),
'affected' => (int) 1,
'numRows' => (int) 1,
'took' => (float) 394
For the sake of simplicity I've actually excluded one more model that the Message model $belongsTo, but the above query shows the problem.
The counterCache function does a quite expensive query just to update the counter. Is there a way to maybe override or adjust the counterCache method to not join irrelevant tables in the query?

Answer 1

I can't test it right now, but since the recursive setting used by Model::updateCounterCache() is hard-coded based on whether conditions are defined for the counter cache field, the only way to change this (besides completely reimplementing Model::updateCounterCache()) is probably to modify the count query in Model::_findCount() or Model::beforeFind() of your Message model.
public function beforeFind($query) {
// ... figure whether this is the count query for updateCounterCache,
// maybe even try to analyze whether the passed conditions require
// joins or not.
if(/* ... */) {
$query['recursive'] = -1;
}
return $query;
}
Depending on how much control you'll actually need the containable behavior might do the trick too, it sets recursive to -1 in case no containments are being passed
$Message->contain(); // === recursive is being set to -1 in before find callback
$Message->delete(123);