Returning extra fields with generatetreelist - cakephp

Question

I don't know if I'm going the right way with the tree behavior but I'm trying to build a comment system for a blog. I would like to have an indentation of 5 level depth.
The generatetreelist method looks like it would be the fastest way to accomplish this but it doesn't look like you can add fields to the query. Am I right ? Is there a way to modify the method ?
Thanks

Answer 1

This is how I do it for categories. You could modify accordingly.
In controller:
$categories = $this->Category->generatetreelist(null,null,null,"|-- ");
$categories_array = array();
foreach($categories as $k => $v)
{
$categories_array[$k] = $this->Category->find('first', array('conditions' => array('Category.id' => $k)));
$categories_array[$k]["Category"]["path"] = $v;
}
$this->set(compact('categories','categories_array'));
In view:
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th><?php __('Id');?></th>
<th><?php __('Name');?></th>
<th><?php __('Status');?></th>
<th><?php __('Action');?></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<?php
$i = 0;
foreach ($categories_array AS $categoryId => $category):
$class = 'even';
if ($i++ % 2 == 0) {
$class = 'odd';
}?>
<tr class="<?php echo $class;?>">
<td><?php echo $category['Category']['id']; ?></td>
<td><?php echo $category["Category"]["path"];?></td>
<?php if ($category['Category']['status'] == '1'){
$published = 'Active';
}else {
$published = 'Inactive';
} ?>
<td><?php echo $published;?></td>
<td>
<?php echo $html->link($html->image("icons/16_icon_view.png"), array('action' => 'view', $category['Category']['id']), array('title'=>'View','escape' => false));?>
<?php echo $html->link($html->image("icons/16_icon_edit.png"), array('action' => 'edit', $category['Category']['id']), array('title'=>'Edit','escape' => false));?>
<?php echo $html->link($html->image("icons/16_icon_delete.png"), array('action' => 'delete', $category['Category']['id']), array('class'=>'delete_trigger','rel'=>'#error','title'=>'Delete','escape' => false));?>
</td>
</tr>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</tbody>
</table>

Answer 2

If it was me, I would just do this in the result set. As you get a numeric array in the first dimension of the results you could use that when outputting the data to indent or add a class to your comments as you needed.