Question

Due to having to having to import data from an old non cake app and oddly built database table I need to pass paginate an array of records it is allowed to display – is this possible?

Normally I would reorganise the data into proper relationships etc but due to time scales etc this is not possible.

To give you more info – in my users table I have a field that contains a list of ID’s that relate to documents they are allowed to view. The field will contain something like

123,23,45,56,765,122,11.9,71,25

Each ID refers to a document the documents model. I know that normally you would create proper ACOs and AROs and let the ACL/Auth componant handle which users can access what but this isnt an option this time around. So I thought if I could do it via paginate/find it might be an option?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You wouldn’t pass it a list of IDs, you’d use the IDs in your paginate conditions – something like below.

(Code written off top of my head, so pardon any syntax errors…etc. It should give you the right idea/path at least):

//Controller
$this->loadModel('User');
$this->loadModel('Document');

$user = $this->User->findById($userId);

$documentIds = explode(',', $user['User']['doc_ids']);

$this->paginate = array(
    'conditions' => array(
        'id' => $documentIds
    )
));
$documents = $this->paginate('Document');

When you pass an array as a condtion (eg. 'id'=>$arrayOfIds), it uses MySQLs “IN” – something like:

... WHERE id IN (45, 92, 173)