Question

EDIT – I was able to fix this problem using code from ‘Farray’ with the following changes:

$categories = $this->Category->find(
        'all',
        array(
        'fields' => array(
           'Category.id',
           'Category.title'
        ),
        'order' => 'Category.title ASC',
        'contain' => array(
            'Article' => array(
            'fields' => array(
                'Article.id',
                'Article.title',
                'Article.slug',
                'Article.main_image'
            ),
            'conditions' => array(
                'published' => 1
            ),
            'order' => 'Article.id DESC',
            'limit' => 4
            )
        )
        )
    );

==================================================================================

My app has an Articles controller as well as Categories controller. I want to display all my categories on the bottom of my Articles’ index and for each Category I want to display 4 articles per the following:

Category 1
    article 1
    article 2
    article 3
    article 4

Category 2
    article 1
    article 2
    article 3
    article 4

etc...

Currently I am accomplishing this using the following code in my index.ctp

foreach($categories as $category){
    echo $category['Category']['title'];
    $this->element('related_articles', array('categoryID'=>$category['Category']['id']));
}

Basically, I go thru all available categories and for each category in foreach

1. I call an element to get related articles
2. This element uses requestAction to call a Categories controller action which return related articles
3. Once again, I go thru foreach to display all related articles

This process is repeated for every Category that I have. Obviously this is not the best way to do this. What is the best way?

The following is what I use in my Articles Controller view function for categories:

$categories = $this->Article->Category->find(
        'all',
        array(
            'fields' => array(
                'Category.id',
                'Category.title'
            ),
            'order' => 'Category.id DESC',
            'recursive' => 1,
            'limit' => 1
        )
    );

With this, my load time gets decreased considerably and if I can find another faster way that would be great…

Answer 1

Use the Containable model behavior and you should be able to do something like this:

$this->Article->contain();
$categories = $this->Article->Category->find( 'all', array(
    'contain' => array(
        'Category' => array(
            'fields' => array(
                'Category.id',
                'Category.title'),
            'order' => 'Category.id DESC' ),
        'Article' => array(
            'fields' => array(
                'Article.id',
                'Article.title'),
            'order' => 'Article.id DESC',
            'limit' => 4
            ) ) ) );

This would get all categories, and 4 articles for each category. I haven’t touched 1.3 in a while so I might be slightly off on the syntax, but this is the way Cake likes to limit model fetches. If you use Containable a lot, you can set it in the model definition (or in AppModel if you want it to apply to all models).