Adding parent_id attribute value in model

Question

I have created a module and EAV tables for that. Module's tables are very similar to customer_Address entity and i have defined Attribute AttrA, AttrB and AttrC for this table.

So table structure is very similar to as follows:

+------------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| Field            | Type                 | Null | Key | Default             | Extra          |
+------------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| entity_id        | int(10) unsigned     | NO   | PRI | NULL                | auto_increment |
| entity_type_id   | smallint(5) unsigned | NO   |     | 0                   |                |
| attribute_set_id | smallint(5) unsigned | NO   |     | 0                   |                |
| increment_id     | varchar(50)          | YES  |     | NULL                |                |
| parent_id        | int(10) unsigned     | YES  | MUL | NULL                |                |
| created_at       | timestamp            | NO   |     | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 |                |
| updated_at       | timestamp            | NO   |     | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 |                |
| is_active        | smallint(5) unsigned | NO   |     | 1                   |                |
+------------------+----------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+

and AttrA, AttrB and AttrC values are stored in tables with respective data type.

Now using the basic syntax, I am able to add value of attributes AttrA, AttrB and AttrC. Which is:

$model = Mage::getModel('customer/address');
$model->setAttrA('ValA')->setAttrB('ValB')->setAttrC('ValC');

doing this correctly sets the values of AttrA, AttrB and AttrC but value of parent_id in customer_entity sets to NULL by default.

Here I want to be able to set the parent_id to some other value.

For this i tried suggestion given in different post using setParentId(<parent-id-value>). Which is not working in my case. Any idea how i can do this?

Answer 1

Even if parent_id is a column in the main table, you still need it as an attribute in the eav_attribute table.
Just create one attribute called parent_id (the same as the column) with the backend_type "static".

This is how it works for the sku attribute for products.

Answer 2

You might also want to try $model->setData('parent_id', $value); and as a personal opinion i would double/triple check you are saving the object correctly.