[BUG]: Magic getters for relationships throws exception when there is no relation in 4.0

[wurst-hans]

My projects are running on Phalcon 3.4. There I'm using many model relationships like

class Requests extends Model {
    public function initialize() {
        $this->belongsTo('customerId', 'App\Models\Customers', 'id', [ 'alias' => 'Customer' ]);
	}
}

which works fine in Phalcon 3.4, so I can use it like

$request = Requests::findFirst();
$customer = $request->getCustomer();

At the moment, I'm trying to migrate all projects to Phalcon 4.0.0.-rc.1-783 but when executing above code, I get an error

Phalcon\Mvc\Model\Exception: The method 'getCustomer' doesn't exist on model 'App\Models\Requests' in ...

I found out that getCustomer() fails and throws exception if customerId is NULL in model Requests. In Phalcon 3.4 I get a false as result, but 4.0 throws an exception.
Getting false allows to initialize a new object, when there is no other already. For this I can modify the code to

$request = Requests::findFirst();
$customer = $request->getCustomer();
$customer = $customer ?: new Customers();

There are hundreds of lines of code in my projects which have to be altered then to prevent this exception in Phalcon 4.0. Is there a workaround or is it planned to add 3.4 behavior again?

IMHO: It's not correct to not add magic getters when column used for relationship is NULL. The expected behavior (like when calling findFirst() without result) is getting false or an object.

Forgot to mention, that I have tried it with lowercase alias already without success. Even with Vokuro this happens.

[Jurigag]

Can you check what happens if you add allowNulls => true ?

[wurst-hans]

Can you check what happens if you add allowNulls => true ?

You mean by adding

'foreignKeys' => [
    'allowNulls' => true
],

to model Requests? Nothing has changed, exception is still thrown.

BTW: I'm logging the database requests and I can see, that Phalcon tries to query database for customer SELECT ... FROM customers WHERE customers.id=:APR0 having :APR0=NULL which is senseless IMO. Apart of fixing this issue, there is no need to query related table when key (i.e. customerId) is NULL.

[zsilbi]

@wurst-hans, this has just been fixed in #14444
Please test the current 4.0.x branch if you can.

[wurst-hans]

@wurst-hans, this has just been fixed in #14444
Please test the current 4.0.x branch if you can.

Looks good. No exception is thrown and I get NULL for non existing relationship. Nevertheless, one could prevent unnecessary database request when relationship key is NULL.
Anyway, thanks for your help. When will this be available in mainline repo?

[zsilbi]

Nevertheless, one could prevent unnecessary database request when relationship key is NULL.

I'll take a look at that soon.

Anyway, thanks for your help. When will this be available in mainline repo?

It will be included in the following 4.0.0-rc.2 release in the next few weeks.

[ruudboon]

@wurst-hans Can you open a new issue for the suggested improvement (good catch!)? Don't want to log this in the same issue. Closing this one as duplicate.