Joins not used for complex HABTM search CakePhp 2 - cakephp

Question

I have Contents, which can have Tags belonging to different TagGroups. I have a quite complex search condition which is as follows:
A Content matches if it is tagged with at least one tag from the search as long as it belongs to the same tag group.
Example:
TagGroup 1 are colours, TagGroup2 are shapes.
So if a Content is tagged with "blue", "turquoise" and "rectangular" it will be found, when I search for "blue" and "rectangular"
However this example is only to show that the logic behind this is quite complex.
Content -> ContentsTag <- Tag -> TagGroup
I want to develop a search with paging of the results I had it working, but between refactoring and framework updates it is broken.
At some point I loose the information for the joins and so my SQL is crashing because it is missing tables.
array(
'limit' => (int) 10,
'order' => array(
'Content.objnbr' => 'asc'
),
'joins' => array(
(int) 0 => array(
'table' => 'sang_contents_tags',
'alias' => 'CT1', //join for the first TagGroup
'type' => 'INNER',
'conditions' => array(
(int) 0 => 'CT1.content_id = Content.Id'
)
),
(int) 1 => array(
'table' => 'sang_contents_tags',
'alias' => 'CT2', //join for the second TagGroup
'type' => 'INNER',
'conditions' => array(
(int) 0 => 'CT2.content_id = Content.Id'
)
)
),
'conditions' => array(
'AND' => array(
(int) 0 => array(
'OR' => array(
(int) 0 => array(
'CT1.tag_id' => '189' // chosen Tag 1 from the first TagGroup
)
)
),
(int) 1 => array(
'OR' => array(
(int) 0 => array(
'CT2.tag_id' => '7' // chosen Tag 2 from the second TagGroup
)
)
)
)
),
'contain' => array(
(int) 0 => 'Description',
'ContentsTag' => array(
'Tag' => array(
(int) 0 => 'Taggroup'
)
)
)
)
results in the following SQL:
SELECT `Content`.`id`, `Content`.`objnbr`, `Content`.`name`, `Content`.`imagecounter`, `Content`.`videolength`, `Content`.`money_maker`, `Content`.`comment`
FROM `my_db`.`contents` AS `Content`
WHERE ((`CT1`.`tag_id` = '189') AND (`CT2`.`tag_id` = '7'))
ORDER BY `Content`.`id` DESC
LIMIT 20
So clearly the Tags CT1 and CT2 are not joined and my sql is crashing.
Could it be that the contain is blocking the joins? If I unset the contain I still get the same result / error.
Any ideas?
Edit: To clarify, what I want to achieve:
The result should be a SQL statement like this:
SELECT `Content`.`id`, `Content`.`objnbr`, `Content`.`name`, `Content`.`imagecounter`, `Content`.`videolength`, `Content`.`money_maker`, `Content`.`comment`
FROM
`my_db`.`contents` AS `Content`
INNER JOIN
contents_tags AS CT1 ON CT1.content_id = Content.Id
INNER JOIN
contents_tags AS CT2 ON CT2.content_id = Content.Id
WHERE
((`CT1`.`tag_id` = '189')
AND (`CT2`.`tag_id` = '7'))
ORDER BY `Content`.`id` DESC
LIMIT 10
It looks like the trouble is caused by the pagination. If I do a "simple" find I get Contents based on the Tags:
$result = $this->Content->find('all', $this->paginate['Content']);
generated query by find:
SELECT
`Content`.`id`,
`Content`.`objnbr`,
`Content`.`name`,
`Content`.`imagecounter`,
`Content`.`videolength`,
`Content`.`money_maker`,
`Content`.`comment`
FROM
`my_db`.`contents` AS `Content`
INNER JOIN
`my_db`.`contents_tags` AS `CT0` ON (`CT0`.`content_id` = `Content`.`Id`)
INNER JOIN
`my_db`.`contents_tags` AS `CT2` ON (`CT2`.`content_id` = `Content`.`Id`)
WHERE
((`CT0`.`tag_id` = '56')
AND (`CT2`.`tag_id` = '7'))
ORDER BY `Content`.`objnbr` ASC

Answer 1

I did a research in the bowels of the pagination class and my conclusion is, that it simply is not able to work with the current Paginator, because I cannot pass on my special joins I need for this complex query.
A custom find type also will not help, because my query is too dynamic for that.
Should anybody prove me wrong I will be a happy coder.