Question

Does anybody see what I’m doing wrong?

The $brand['slug'] is empty when saving so i guess something is going wrong in the find query.

Thanks in advance.

public function beforeSave() {
    if (isset($this->data['Smartphone']['model'])) {

        $brand = $this->Brand->find('first', array(
            'conditions' => array(
                'Brand.id' => $this->data['Smartphone']['brand_id']
            )
        ));

        $this->data['Smartphone']['slug'] =  $brand['slug'].'-'.Inflector::slug(strtolower($this->data['Smartphone']['model']), '-');
    }
    return true;
}

Answer 1

What it looks, I think you should use $brand['Brand']['slug'] instead of $brand['slug'].

You can try to print $brand array using pr($brand); just after the find query you have written. And provide the array index accordingly.