2 Find statements in one function in CakePHP 2.1 - cakephp-2.0

Question

Hi I'm currently working on a project and was wondering if it was possible to do two find functions in cakephp?
For example I am making a sports news website and I am grouping the news articles as top story, understory and headline.
What I want to do is retrive top stories so i can highlight these as the prominent story and then understory will be beneath as a lesser story and then headlines will be the least important.
This is what I have so far
function latestnews() {
$articles = $this->Article->find('all',
array('limit' =>3,
'order' =>
array('Article.date_created' => 'desc')));
if(isset($this->params['requested'])) {
return $articles;
}
$this->set('articles', $articles);
$articler = $this->Article->find('all',
array('Article.type' => 'topstory',
'Limit' => '1'
));
$this->set('articles', $articler);
}
however this doesn't seem to work, it doesn't limit the $articles function but instead echos all the data in the table.
in the view im doing a standard foreach statement to echo the data and I get thrown a undefined variable error.
Is what i am saying even possible or should I create different functions and then use them as elements?
Thanks for any input in advance!

Answer 1

You can bind the associationship with itself dynamically. Try this code:
function latestnews() {
$this->Article->bindModel(array('hasMany' => array('TopStory' => array('className' => 'Article',
'foreignKey' => false,
'conditions' => array('Article.type' => 'topstory')
),
'Highlight' .....
)));
$articles = $this->Article->find('all',
array('limit' =>3,
'order' => array('Article.date_created' => 'desc')));
if(isset($this->params['requested'])) {
return $articles;
}
$this->set('articles', $articles);
$articler = $this->Article->find('all',
array('Article.type' => 'topstory',
'Limit' => '1'
));
$this->set('articles', $articler);
}
Hope it will work for you.

Answer 2

#Arun Nope that didn't seem to work, I get this error, Error: SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'Article.type' in 'where clause' also I've tried to put it in an element with its own function and I then get thrown this error...
Notice (8): Undefined variable: data [APP/View/Elements/Articles/topstories.ctp, line 5]
Warning (2): Invalid argument supplied for foreach() [APP/View/Elements/Articles/topstories.ctp, line 5]
Notice (8): Undefined property: View::$Paginator [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 806]
Fatal error: Call to a member function prev() on a non-object in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/kickoff/app/View/Elements/Articles/topstories.ctp on line 21
The controller code is the following...
function topstories() {
$this->paginate = array(
'conditions' => array('Article.type' => 'topstory'),
'limit' => 2,
'order' => array(
'date_created' => 'asc'
)
);
$data = $this->paginate('Article');
$this->set(compact('data'));
}
I find this error confusing as if I don't put this in an element and in a view instead it works perfectly! however in an element not so perfect :S
any ideas as to why this is the case??

Answer 3

Instead of using two find methods in one function I instead chose to simply create different functions and use them as elements for example...
function premiershiptopstory() {
$pltopnews = $this->Article->find('all', array(
'conditions' => array('Article.league' => 'premiership',
'Article.type' => 'topstory')));
if(!empty($this->request->params['requested'])) {
return $pltopnews;}
$this->set('article', $pltopnews);
}
However in the view you must request the action otherwise you will get thrown an error, to request the action simply use this line of code...
<?php $pltopnews = $this->requestAction('/Articles/premiershiptopstory');
Hope this helps others!