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Ed Finkler - Founder, Open Sourcing Mental Illness

Written by Megan on May 18, 2017 •
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Do you know who Ed Finkler is or what OSMI does? If you are in the developer community, then it definitely is a name you should get to know.

Open Sourcing Mental Illness is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness, educating, and providing resources to support mental wellness in the tech and open source communities.

CakeDC and CakePHP has long supported and stood behind OSMI - Ed Finkler has been instrumental in making mental health a topic of discussion, and opening up lines of support for mental wellness in tech. Mental health and wellness are close to our hearts and we want to share with you OSMI and why you should support it.

Ed has been active in bringing forward a previously rarely discussed topic - mental health. Being an advocate of mental health awareness and using his own experiences as a developer, he has recently announced that he is now able to go full time into OSMI. This is really fantastic news and CakeDC stands 100% behind him. We caught us with him to find out more.

We love that you are now putting all your time into OSMI - but what was the Catalyst for your decision to focus full time into OSMI?
What we found is that we simply had to much to do, and not enough time to do it. Everyone at OSMI are volunteers, and it was becoming increasingly challenging to find the bandwidth for anyone to complete major tasks. We are ambitious, and our ambition far exceeded the time available. I couldn’t ask it of anyone else, but I could make a decision myself -- that I would step away from my CTO role at a tech startup and dedicate myself to OSMI full-time.
What is your favorite thing to do out of ‘office’ hours (Hobbies/activities etc)?
Generally I find myself watching movies or good TV shows, or playing video games (I’m deep in Mass Effect: Andromeda right now). I also write electronic music, which you can hear at deadagent.net.
Do you think that companies are becoming more receptive to your message and becoming more open about speaking about mental health?
Yes, I think so. Companies in general are gradually becoming more aware of the need to discuss mental health openly, the same way we discuss other serious public health issues, like cancer and heart disease. But there’s a long, long way to go, and we are just taking our first steps as an industry to deal with this in a healthy way.
Have you seen a marked difference in people opening up about their personal experiences?
I definitely have observed, over and over, that when someone takes that first step forward, others follow. Fear is the thing that keeps mental illness hidden, and fear is why so many suffer in silence. Seeing someone speak without fear about their own issues empowers the listener. They may not need to stand up on stage like I do, but I’ve had numerous people tell me that hearing someone speak openly was what allowed them to seek help and/or start speaking openly about the subject.
What would you say is the biggest misconception that you have encountered when speaking about and sharing your personal experiences?
I think the biggest misconception I encounter is companies believing that by simply offering some level of mental health care in medical coverage, they’ve done all they can. That would be fine if we treated mental disorders like we do cancer or heart disease or diabetes, but we don’t -- we are afraid to discuss it, and as a consequence, we don’t know what to look for, why it matters, and how to seek help. In the absence of consistent, positive affirmation that it’s a safe topic, our default is to be afraid to discuss it. That keeps people from seeking the help they need.
Biggest piece of advice that you would give someone battling with mental health issues
You are not alone. Lots of people are like you. There is no shame in what you deal with. You are stronger than you know.
You recently spoke about mental health breaks on the OSMI blog, how would someone know they are in need of one and how would you suggest for employees to bring this topic up with their employers?
I am leery of giving specific health advice, but in general I’d say this: listen to your mind and your body, and remember that your own health is far, far more important than any job. Plus, if you’re healthy, you’ll be able to do your job much better.
In the last 5 years, you have achieved incredible breakthroughs and achievements in bringing this to the fore - where do you see OSMI and mental illness awareness in the next 5 years?
Ultimately, those two things are intertwined. OSMI will continue to grow because so many of us suffer from this, and more and more of us are realizing that we aren’t alone. That we aren’t broken. That we aren’t without hope. OSMI is about giving hope to those that felt they had none. Giving compassion to those who are hardest on themselves.
It’s my sincere hope that OSMI will drive the awareness of mental health in the tech workplace and change what we choose to value in employers and employees. However we get there, I believe we will succeed.
As someone suffering and wanting to find out more or be involved, how do we reach out, what should we expect and where should we go?
There are lots of ways to help OSMI, and all you really need is a willingness to spend some of your time working with us. You should visit https://osmihelp.org and learn more about our work, and then email [email protected] to talk to us about volunteering.
As a business with employees in the tech industry, what should we do to make mental health more accessible
For each employer there’s a different answer, but there are some general things to keep in mind. The biggest one is that the well-being of your employees must be a top priority. It’s an easy thing to say, but if you truly value it, you’ll avoid doing what so many organizations do: rewarding overwork and unhealthy “loyalty.” Ping pong tables and bean bag chairs don’t make people healthier, and neither do free snacks and beer at the office. They’re short-term tricks to get people to come to you and maybe stay in the office longer, but they don’t encourage a healthy work/life balance. Too many developers think their work IS their life. That’s a mistake.
Long term, what works are reasonable work hours, easy access to mental and physical health care, and promoting healthy preventative habits. Employees who feel that their well-being is demonstrably valued will be more productive and stay with your organization longer.
I also strongly encourage everyone in a leadership position to take Mental Health First Aid <https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org>, a program that teaches the skills to respond to the signs of mental illness and substance use.
Quote to live by or key advice to follow every day
One time I was encouraged to do a six-word memoir, and this is what I came up with:
“By helping others, I save myself.”

Thanks to Ed! We absolutely loved catching up with him about OSMI, we hope that you take a moment to check out the links and find out more to get involved and continue this important conversation!

For more information, be sure to check out https://osmihelp.org/about/about-osmi

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CakeFest 2025 Wrap Up

For years I have heard the team talk about Madrid being one of their favorite cities to visit, because they hosted CakeFest there more than a decade ago. I can now confirm… they were right! What a beautiful city. Another great CakeFest in the books… Thanks Madrid! Not only are we coming down from the sugar high, but we are also honored to be celebrating 20 years of CakePHP. It was amazing to celebrate with the attendees (both physical and virtual). If you watched the cake ceremony, you saw just how emotional it made Larry to reminisce on the last 20 years. I do know one thing, CakePHP would not be where it is without the dedicated core, and community. Speaking of the core, we had both Mark Scherer and Mark Story joining us as presenters this year. It is a highlight for our team to interact with them each year. I know a lot of the other members from the core team would have liked to join us as well, but we hope to see them soon. The hard work they put in day after day is unmatched, and often not recognized enough. It’s hard to put into words how grateful we are for this group of bakers. Our event was 2 jam packed days of workshops and talk presentations, which you can now see a replay of on our YouTube channel (youtube.com/cakephp). We had presenters from Canada, Germany, India, Spain, USA, and more! This is one of my favorite parts about the CakePHP community, the diversity and representation from all over the world. When we come together in one room, with one common goal, it’s just magical. Aside from the conference itself, the attendees had a chance to network, mingle, and enjoy meals together as a group. I could sense the excitement of what’s to come for a framework that is very much still alive. Speaking of which… spoiler alert: CakePHP 6 is coming. Check out the roadmap HERE. I feel as though our team leaves the event each year with a smile on their face, and looking forward to the next. The events are growing each year, although we do like to keep the small group/intimate type of atmosphere. I am already getting messages about the location for next year, and I promise we will let you know as soon as we can (when we know!). In the meantime, start preparing your talks, and send us your location votes. The ovens are heating up….

Written by Amanda on October 16, 2025

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Polymorphic Relationships in CakePHP: A Beginner's Guide

Have you ever wondered how to make one database table relate to multiple other tables? Imagine a comments table that needs to store comments for both articles and videos. How do you manage that without creating separate tables or complicated joins? The answer is a polymorphic relationship. It sounds fancy, but the idea is simple and super powerful.

What's a Polymorphic Relationship?

Think of it this way: instead of a single foreign key pointing to one specific table, a polymorphic relationship uses two columns to define the connection. Let's stick with our comments example. To link a comment to either an article or a video, your comments table would have these two special columns:

foreign_id: This holds the ID of the related record (e.g., the id of an article or the id of a video).
model_name: This stores the name of the model the comment belongs to (e.g., 'Articles' or 'Videos').

This flexible setup allows a single comment record to "morph" its relationship, pointing to different types of parent models. It's clean, efficient, and saves you from a lot of redundant code. It's not necessary for them to be called "foreign_id" and "model_name"; they could have other names (table, model, reference_key, model_id, etc.) as long as you maintain the intended function of each. Now, let's see how you can set this up in CakePHP 5 without breaking a sweat.

Making It Work in CakePHP 5

While some frameworks have built-in support for polymorphic relationships, CakePHP lets you create them just as easily using its powerful ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) associations. We'll use the conditions key to define the polymorphic link.

Step 1: Set Up Your Database

We'll use a simple schema with three tables: articles, videos, and comments.

-- articles table
CREATE TABLE articles (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(255)
);

-- videos table
CREATE TABLE videos (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(255)
);

-- comments table
CREATE TABLE comments (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    content TEXT,
    foreign_id INT NOT NULL,
    model_name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);

Notice how the comments table has our special foreign_id and model_name columns.

Step 2: Configure Your Models in CakePHP

Now for the magic! We'll define the associations in our Table classes. ArticlesTable.php In this file, you'll tell the Articles model that it has many Comments, but with a specific condition.

// src/Model/Table/ArticlesTable.php

namespace App\Model\Table;

use Cake\ORM\Table;

class ArticlesTable extends Table
{
    public function initialize(array $config): void
    {
        // ...
        $this->hasMany('Comments', [
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => ['Comments.model_name' => self::class], // or 'Articles'
            'dependent' => true, // Deletes comments if an article is deleted
        ]);
    }
}

Use self::class is a best practice in modern PHP, as it prevents bugs if you ever decide to rename your classes, and your IDE can auto-complete and check it for you VideosTable.php You'll do the same thing for the Videos model, but change the model_name condition.

// src/Model/Table/VideosTable.php

namespace App\Model\Table;

use Cake\ORM\Table;

class VideosTable extends Table
{
    public function initialize(array $config): void
    {
        // ...
        $this->hasMany('Comments', [
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => ['Comments.model_name' => self::class], // or 'Videos'
            'dependent' => true,
        ]);
    }
}

CommentsTable.php This table is the owner of the polymorphic association. You can add associations here to easily access the related Article or Video from a Comment entity.

// src/Model/Table/CommentsTable.php

namespace App\Model\Table;

use Cake\ORM\Table;

class CommentsTable extends Table
{
    public function initialize(array $config): void
    {
        // ...
        $this->belongsTo('Articles', [
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => ['Comments.model_name' => \App\Model\Table\ArticlesTable::class], // or 'Articles'
        ]);

        $this->belongsTo('Videos', [
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => ['Comments.model_name' => \App\Model\Table\VideosTable::class], // or 'Videos'
        ]);
    }
}

Step 3: Using the Relationship

Now that everything is set up, you can fetch data as if it were a normal association. Fetching Comments for an Article:

$article = $this->Articles->get(1, ['contain' => 'Comments']);

// $article->comments will contain a list of comments for that article

Creating a new Comment for a Video:

$video = $this->Videos->get(2);
$comment = $this->Comments->newEmptyEntity();

$comment->content = 'This is an awesome video!';
$comment->foreign_id = $video->id;
$comment->model_name = \App\Model\Table\VideosTable::class; // or 'Videos'

$this->Comments->save($comment);

As you can see, the model_name and foreign_id fields are the secret sauce that makes this pattern work.

What About the Future? The Power of This Solution

Now that you've got comments working for both articles and videos, what if your app grows and you want to add comments to a new model, like Photos? With this polymorphic setup, the change is incredibly simple. You don't need to alter your comments table at all. All you have to do is: Create your photos table in the database. Add a new PhotosTable.php model. In the new PhotosTable's initialize() method, add the hasMany association, just like you did for Articles and Videos.

// src/Model/Table/PhotosTable.php

namespace App\Model\Table;

use Cake\ORM\Table;

class PhotosTable extends Table
{
    public function initialize(array $config): void
    {
        // ...
        $this->hasMany('Comments', [
            'foreignKey' => 'foreign_id',
            'conditions' => ['Comments.model_name' => self::class],
            'dependent' => true,
        ]);
    }
}

That's it! You've just extended your application's functionality with minimal effort. This demonstrates the true power of polymorphic relationships: a single, scalable solution that can easily adapt to your application's evolving needs. It's a key pattern for building flexible and maintainable software.

Conclusion

This approach is flexible, scalable, and a great way to keep your database schema simple. Now that you know the basics, you can start applying this pattern to more complex problems in your own CakePHP applications!

Written by Arodriguez on September 24, 2025

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Closing Advent Calendar 2024

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 24th 2024) That’s a wrap on the CakeDC 2024 advent calendar blog series. Did you get to read all of them? Hopefully you obtained some useful information to use in your future baking. We would love to get your feedback, feel free to share! It is still hard to believe that 2024 is almost over, but we are looking forward to an extraordinary 2025. On behalf of CakeDC, we want to thank our team for all the hours of hard work they put in this year. Also, thank you to our clients for trusting us with your CakePHP projects, it is an absolute pleasure getting to work with each of you. We are thankful for the great relationships we have built, or carried on in the last 12 months. For our CakePHP community, especially the core team, please know how incredibly grateful we are for your support of the framework. There is a reason that Cake is still around after 20 years, and it’s great developers like you, who dedicate their time and efforts to keep the code going. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. As far as what is to come for CakePHP in 2025, stay tuned. However, I am told that there are some top secret (not really, we are opensource after all) talks about CakePHP 6 happening. With the release of PHP 8.4, I am sure some awesome features will be implemented in Cake specifically. We will also be celebrating 20 years of CakePHP next year, can you believe it? CakeFest will be in honor of all core members past and present, and it may be a good time to introduce some new ones as well. If you are a core member (or former), we would love to have you attend the conference this year. The location will be announced soon. Interested in getting involved or joining the core team? You can find some helpful links here: https://cakephp.org/get-involved We hope you enjoyed our gift this year, it’s the least we could do. Wishing you a happy holiday season from our CakeDC family to yours. See you next year! … sorry, I had to do it. :) Also, here are some final words from our President: Larry Masters.

A Christmas Message to the CakePHP Community

As we gather with loved ones to celebrate the joy and hope of the Christmas season, I want to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared this year as part of the CakePHP community. This is a special time of year when people around the world come together to celebrate love, grace, and the hope that light brings into the world. It’s also a time to give thanks for the connections that make our lives richer. The CakePHP framework has always been about more than just code, it’s about people. It’s the collective effort of contributors from around the world who believe in building something better, together. To everyone who has shared their expertise, contributed code, written documentation, tested features, or offered guidance to others, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your dedication and passion. As we approach 2025, it brings even greater meaning to reflect on how far we’ve come. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of CakePHP. From the first lines of code to the projects we support today, the journey has been nothing short of remarkable. As we look ahead to the new year, let us carry forward this spirit of generosity, collaboration, and unity. Together, we can continue to empower developers, build exceptional tools, and foster a community that is inclusive, welcoming, and supportive. On behalf of everyone at Cake Development Corporation, I wish you and your families a blessed Christmas filled with peace, joy, and love. May the new year bring us more opportunities to create, connect, and grow together. Thank you for being part of this journey. Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to everyone. With gratitude, Larry Masters This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 24th 2024)

Written by Amanda on December 24, 2024