CakePHP Questions

Hello, I was building my custom gallery behavior to enable "attaching" images for any other model.

My behavior uses model named 'Photo' as storage for saving uploaded photos. Here's schema:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `photos` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `foreign_key` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `model` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  `association` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

Each model that need to support image uploading has something like this in $actsAs var:

var $actsAs = array('Gallery'=>array('limit'=>10, 'association'=>'titlePic', 'rules'=>array(
		array('suffix'=>'_title', 'options'=>array('x' => 240, 'ratio_no_zoom_in' => true)),
		array('suffix'=>'_catalog', 'options'=>array('x' => 110, 'y' => 93, 'ratio_crop' => true)),
		array('suffix'=>'_big', 'options'=>array('x' => 1000, 'y' => 700, 'ratio_no_zoom_in' => true))
	)));

So, for example, if I upload image for Article model, its being saved to webroot/img/articles/titlePic/ in three versions: one for each 'resize rule' as defined in Article Model. So-called association is needed to enable multiple sets of rules for 1 model. Resizing is made using 3-rd party image resizing class.

Then, when a I fetch an Article data ($this->find('All')) for example, I get result with picture info, prepared by some callback in gallery behavior.

Behaviour provides some number of methods for model, like

$this->getImages($id_of_row_of_model_with_gallery_behaviour);
$this->deleteImage($id_of_image_in_photo_table);
$this->deleteImages($id_of_row_of_model_with_gallery_behaviour);

...

I use ajax like upload of pics using iframe. Such 'ajax' request goes to current's model controller, 'admin_ajaxupload'.

So basicly to use gallery behavior on my app I need following:

a table in database

a model file Photo (actually I dont need one as its empty)

behavior itself

helper that generates all html and javascript that needed for uploading photos

and some methods in controller to handle uploads/deletes and so on.

Now, when I described it to you, I will proceed to my questions.

One thing that bug me a lot is code repeation in my controllers, 6 of my 9 controllers has almost the same code. Its bad, but Im not sure should I extract it to AppController or move to component?

Another thing that bother me, as properties for photos. For example, I need to add some sort of title for each photo. It's not hard add a 'title' column to photos table, but if I needed to add more columns its can become messy - for example some models would need to use 3 additional properties, while others dont' need them at all. Also, I would like to use one table for all my apps. The best solution I could think of so far is to add one new column called "properties" or smthng like that. It's value would be some serialized properties, which would be processed by galleryBehavior. Although I'm not sure if its correct way.

The last thing is image resizing class. I looked at it, and thought about transforming it into Photo model, as currently I have pretty much dummy model, and it seems to be correctly putting image processing logic to Photo model.

That's my 3 questions at one time, your comments are welcome!