CakePHP: drop-down list with database fields - cakephp

Question

I've got this relationship between two models:
Snippet belongsTo SnippetCategory
SnippetCategory hasMany Snippet
I need a drop-down list of SnippetCategories when I add a new Snippet. For this, I've got the following code:
//Snippet.php
public $belongsTo = array(
'SnippetCategory' => array(
'className' => 'SnippetCategory',
'foreignKey' => 'snippet_category_id'));
//SnippetCategory.php
public $hasMany = array(
'Snippet' => array(
'className' => 'Snippet',
'foreignKey' => 'snippet_category_id',
'dependent' => true));
//SnippetsController.php
public function add() {
$categories = $this->Snippet->SnippetCategory->find('list');
$this->set(compact('categories'));
if ($this->request->is('post')) {
$this->request->data['Snippet']['user_id'] = $this->Auth->user('id');
if ($this->Snippet->saveAssociated($this->request->data)) {
$this->Session->setFlash('Snippet saved.');
$this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
}
}
}
//Snippets/add.ctp
// ...html...
echo $this->Form->input('categories', array(
'tabindex' => 2));
// ...html...
But I'm getting a "Call to a member function find() on a non-object" error. I know it has to be some stupid error, but I'm not able to find what I'm doing wrong...
Please, someone could help me with this? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

First of all, you should post the whole code from the Snippet and SnippetCategory model. Maybe there's something that is causing this oddly behavior that is not shown in this snippet of code.
The error is quite straight forward, SnippetCategory is not initialized.
You can always use:
$this->loadModel('SnippetCategory');
$this->SnippetCategory->find('list');
But it's not the smarttest way because SnippetCategory model must be initialized with the Snippet model