how to validate country name in cakephp - cakephp

Question

I have two tables, profiles and regions.
in regions table I have list of all countries name. and in profiles table I have profile for my users and one of the field in that table in 'country'
Previously I was giving users an input box to enter country name but recently I noticed that few people are entering wrong information there. One guy entered 'jupiter' as his country name.
now what I wanna do is in my Profile model is something like this:
'country must exist' => array(
'rule' => 'countryValidation',
'message' => 'There is no such country'
)
public function countryValidation($check) {
$country = strtolower($this->data['Profile']['country']);
$countries = array();
$regions = $this-Region->find('all');
foreach($regions as $region){
array_push($countries, strtolower($region['Region']['country']));
}
return in_array($country,$countries);
}
and I am sure that the problem here is with
$regions = $this-Region->find('all');
What's the correct way to validate country?
BTW, I can't give a drop down list of country because it mess up with my layout/website design.

Answer 1

What you're looking to do is a bad idea, as you can't guarantee that end users will spell the names of the countries correctly etc.......
At any rate, create a custom function in your model
public function myFunction($countryName){
return in_array($countryName,$countriesList);
}
where $countriesList is an array of country names.
In the model validation you can do the following
public $validate = array(
'country' => array(
'rule' => 'myFunction',
'message' => 'Insert custom message here'
)
);
EDIT:
Then I would create a custom find function in the Region model, and call it from the current model to retrieve an array of results for validation. Something like:
$countriesList = $this->Region->customFunction();
or $countriesList = $this->Region->find('list);

Answer 2

Check this to use a model in another model
App::uses('Model', 'Region');
$Region = new Region();
$regions = $Region->find('all');