Question

I got two tables: users and firms:

class Firm extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'Firm';
    var $hasAndBelongsToMany = 'User';
}

and:

class User extends  AppModel {
    var $name = 'User';
    var $hasMany ='Post';
    var $hasAndBelongsToMany = 'Firm';
}

I use scaffold var to display all save/view/edit etc methods. I override the add method like this:

function add(){
    if (!empty($this->data)) {
        $this->User->create();
        $this->User->save($this->data);
        $this->redirect(array('action'=>'index'), null, true);
    }
    $firms = $this->User->Firm->find('list');
    $this->set('firms', $firms);
}

Everything works great, but when i use users/add, I got dropdown with id: “1”,”2″,etc.
I would like to display Firm name, not id. How to do that?

Answer 1

You need to set the ‘displayField‘ property in your models, this is what Cake uses in various built in functions, including find(‘list’);` This defaults to ‘name’ or ‘title’ field in your database, but I’m guessing you don’t have those fields in the firms database.

Change it with this in your Firms model:

var $displayField = 'firm_name';