How can I do an arbitrary level of recursion in CakePHP - cakephp

Question

I have a blog post model:
App::uses('AppModel', 'Model');
class BlogPost extends AppModel {
public $primaryKey = "ID";
public $useDbConfig = 'dev_blog';
public $useTable = 'posts';
public $hasMany = array(
'BlogComment' => array(
'foreignKey' => 'comment_post_ID',
'className' => 'BlogComment',
'order' => 'BlogComment.comment_date DESC',
'conditions' => array(
'BlogComment.comment_approved' => '1',
'BlogComment.comment_parent' => 0
)
)
);
}
And a blog comment model:
App::uses('AppModel', 'Model');
class BlogComment extends AppModel {
public $primaryKey = "comment_ID";
public $useDbConfig = 'dev_blog';
public $useTable = 'comments';
public $hasMany = array(
'Children' => array(
'className' => 'BlogComment',
'foreignKey' => 'comment_parent',
'order' => 'Children.comment_date DESC',
'conditions' => array(
'Children.comment_approved' => 1
)
)
);
}
In the controller, I set recursion on BlogPost equal to 2 and did a find:
$options = array(
'conditions' => array(
'BlogPost.ID' => $postID,
'BlogPost.post_status' => 'publish'
),
);
$post = $this->BlogPost->find('first', $options);
What this does is get the content of a particular blog post, all root comments and one level of replies to the root comments. It doesn't get a reply to a reply, though. How can I retrieve an arbitrary depth of replies?

Answer 1

Just don't use recursive at all. Ever.
Set it to -1 in the AppModel:
public $recursive = -1;
Then forget you even heard of it, and use CakePHP's awesome Containable Behavior to get the data you need.
Note: See the MANY other answers related to using CakePHP's Containable.