Cakephp Paginate Distinct record - cakephp

Question

So this is what I am trying to do.
My table say(Courses) has multiple entries with same id.
When I get the data from paginate it shows all the records. So if I have 3 records with Id 5 it will show record number 5 three times.
Now What I want is that it should show the record only once.
I searched online but can't find anything.
If anyone has come across such problem and found a solution to it please let me know.
Thanks,

Answer 1

I came across your problem, as I had a similar problem. David Z's solution did not work for me, but I did find that the group variable in $paginate worked for me.
So using your code sample above, this is how I'd think it should work.
$paginate = array(
'Courses' => array(
'limit' => 20,
'fields' => array('Courses.id'),
'conditions' => $cond,
'group' => array('Courses.id'),
'order' => array('Courses.id' => 'asc')
)
);
To hopefully shed some more light on the solution that worked for me, I have Systems that belong to Companies. I wanted to get a list of the unique companies, for the systems I have. This is the exact code I used, that worked for me
$this->paginate = array ('fields' => array ('Company.*'),
'order' => array('Company.name' => 'ASC'),
'group' => array('Company.id'));
$this->set('companies', $this->paginate($this->Company->System));
Hope this has helped

Answer 2

Looking at the CakePHP cookbook, the documentation for pagination shows that you can override the $paginate member. Behind the scenes, this similar to passing in the parameters for your model's find('all'). Maybe try setting parameter to explicitly return the filds that you are interested with the distinct keyword to narrow down the values you need?
class RecipesController extends AppController {
var $paginate = array(
'fields' => array('Model.field1', 'DISTINCT Model.field2')
);
}

Answer 3

So here is how my paginate variable looks like:
var $paginate = array(
'Courses' => array(
'limit' => 20,
'page' => 1,
'order' => array(
'Courses.id' => 'asc')
),
);
The condition variable looks something like this:
$cond = array("Courses.id LIKE "=>$this->data['id_search'],
"Courses.length LIKE "=>$this->data['length_search'],
"Courses.marks LIKE "=>$this->data['marks']
);
And this is how I am calling paginate.
$data = $this->paginate('CdmaRfReport',$cond);
I tried doing
$paginate = array(
'Courses' => array(
'limit' => 20,
'fields' => array('DISTINCT Courses.id'),
'page' => 1,
'conditions' => $cond,
'group' => array('id'),
'order' => array(
'Courses.id' => 'asc')
)
);
It doesn't seem to help.
I also tried
$cond = array("DISTINCT Courses.id "=>$this->data['id_search'],
"Courses.length LIKE "=>$this->data['length_search'],
"Courses.marks LIKE "=>$this->data['marks']
);
Even this errors out
I might be something wrong. But I am not able to figure it out.
Any suggestions please let me know.