Cakephp find all query on multiple models - cakephp

Question

I try the following to get al the Articles That belong to MenuItem 6 and have an Article content_type of 'blog'. It does find all the articles with content_type='blog'. But I only want it to return the Article if it belongs to Menuitem 7. And now it return an empty value for MenuItem when not 7.
How can I accomplish that it'll only load the articles from MenuItem 7?
MenuItem has a HABTM relationship with Article
code:
$d=$this->Article->find('all' , array('contain' => array(
'MenuItem' => array(
'conditions' => array(
'MenuItem.id ' => 7,
),
'fields'=>'id'
),
'Tag'=>array(
'conditions'=>array(
'Tag.name'=>'tag1'
),
'fields'=>'name'
)
),
'conditions'=>array('Article.content_type' => 'blog'),
'fields'=>array('id','content_type'),
'recursive'=>1
));
debug($d);
array:
array(
(int) 10 => array(
'Article' => array(
'id' => '15',
'content_type' => 'blog'
),
'Tag' => array(),
'MenuItem' => array()
),
(int) 11 => array(
'Article' => array(
'id' => '16',
'content_type' => 'blog'
),
'Tag' => array(),
'MenuItem' => array(
(int) 0 => array(
'id' => '7',
'MenuItemsArticle' => array(
'id' => '18',
'title' => '',
'article_id' => '16',
'menu_item_id' => '7'
)
)
)
)
)

Answer 1

I think your best bet for this type of find condition is to modify your models to use hasMany through (The Join Model). Here's an example I tested that does what you want:
Article.php
class Article extends AppModel {
public $hasMany = array('ArticleMenuItem');
}
MenuItem.php
class MenuItem extends AppModel {
public $hasMany = array('ArticleMenuItem');
}
ArticleMenuItem.php
class ArticleMenuItem extends AppModel {
public $useTable = 'articles_menu_items';
public $belongsTo = array(
'Article',
'MenuItem'
);
}
The Find Call
$articles = $this->ArticleMenuItem->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array(
'menu_item_id' => 7,
'Article.content_type' => 'blog'
),
'contain' => array(
'Article' => array(
'fields' => array(
'id',
'title'
)
),
'Tag'
)
));
Here's what it produces:
array(
(int) 0 => array(
'ArticleMenuItem' => array(
'article_id' => '1',
'menu_item_id' => '7'
),
'Article' => array(
'id' => '1',
'content_type' => 'blog',
'title' => 'test blog'
)
),
(int) 1 => array(
'ArticleMenuItem' => array(
'article_id' => '4',
'menu_item_id' => '7'
),
'Article' => array(
'id' => '4',
'content_type' => 'blog',
'title' => 'another'
)
)
)
And here's the query it generates:
SELECT `ArticleMenuItem`.`article_id`, `ArticleMenuItem`.`menu_item_id`, `Article`.`id`, `Article`.`content_type`, `Article`.`title` FROM `caketest`.`articles_menu_items` AS `ArticleMenuItem` LEFT JOIN `caketest`.`articles` AS `Article` ON (`ArticleMenuItem`.`article_id` = `Article`.`id`) WHERE `menu_item_id` = 7 AND `Article`.`content_type` = 'blog'
I've set $recursive = -1 in my AppModel as well. I would suggest doing the same since you are using the containable behavior, it's much more efficient because it only pulls back the data that you need. :)
Hope this helps, any questions just let me know.