CakePHP save without form

I have a photo gallery I'm trying to se开发者_Python百科t a picture as the cover for the album. I have a field cover_id in the albums table that has already been linked to the photos through the model. I'm passing the album_id and photo_id to the controller. I want to update the album.cover_id passed thru the params with the photo_id passed thru the params. Is there a way to do this or a way to make the link a form without having it look like or form or changing much of the CSS?

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Saving data and forms are two separate things, you can use one without the other. You can pass variables from the browser to the server either via POST (usually a form) or GET (in the URL). Mix and match that to do whatever you want to do. For example:

echo $html->link('Set as cover', array('controller' => 'albums', 'action' => 'set_cover', 42, 123));

URL: /albums/set_cover/42/123

class AlbumsController extends AppController {

    function set_cover($album_id, $photo_id) {
        $this->Album->save(array('id' => $album_id, 'cover_id' => $photo_id));
    }

}

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I would just add it to the data array prior to saving

$this->data['Album']['cover_id'] = $this->params[0];
$this->data['Album']['id'] = $this->params[1];

$this->Album->save($this->data);

If you want to have a look, you can always pr() $this->params to see what the controller is aware of.