cake php views from belongsTo association - cakephp

Question

i have two tables with the following columns, guardians(id,student_no) and student(id,admission_no). student_no is foreign to admision_no. students has a hasMany association with guardians, guardians has a belongsTo association with students.
here are my models
STUDENT
public $hasMany = array(
'Guardian' => array(
'className' => 'Guardian',
'foreignKey' => 'student_no',
'dependent' => true,
)
)
GUARDIAN
public $belongsTo = array(
'Student' => array(
'className' => 'Student',
'foreignKey' => 'student_no',
)
)
Guardian controller
public function view($id = null) {
if (!$this->Guardian->exists($id)) {
throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid guardian'));
}
$options = array('conditions' => array('Guardian.' . $this->Guardian->primaryKey => $id));
$this->set('guardian', $this->Guardian->find('first', $options));
}
Guardian view.ctp
(truncated to view only the associated student from within the Guardian model)
<h3><?php echo __('Associated Students'); ?></h3>
<?php if (!empty($guardian['Student'])): ?>
<table cellpadding = "0" cellspacing = "0">
<tr>
<th><?php echo __('Admission No'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('First Name'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Last Name'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Gender'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Date Of Birth'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Join Date'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Form'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Student Class'); ?></th>
<th><?php echo __('Middle Name'); ?></th>
<th class="actions"><?php echo __('Actions'); ?></th>
</tr>
<?php foreach ($guardian['Student'] as $student): ?>
<tr>`
<td><?php echo $student['admission_no']; ?></td>
line(115) <td><?php echo $student['first_name']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['last_name']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['gender']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['date_of_birth']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['join_date']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['form']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['student_class']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $student['middle_name']; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</table>
i can view associated parent details from students view with above similar code,
however in guardians view i get error for the associated guardian
ERROR:Warning (2): Illegal string offset 'first_name' [APP/View/Guardians/view.ctp, line 115]
and for three lines below it.what exactly is going wrong

Answer 1

Do some debugging: debug($guardian)
In your belongsTo assocaition, a guardian can only have a single student, so you are iterating over the columns of that one single student, ie consequently the $student variable will be a string, hence the error.
See also Cookbook > Models > Associations > belongsTo