Question

I have 3 tables that contain user information, one for students, one for teachers and one for administrators.

They are not related in any way. I wan’t to create a dashboard for the Administrators, where a list of students and teachers shows up.

The only way I found to achieve this was using the $uses variable in the Administrators controller. However, I have read in many places that this is bad practice.

Any solutions?

Answer 1

Another, perhaps better practice is the use of ClassRegistry::init('MyModel')->myMethod() (more reading @ Cake API)

This only loads the object when it’s used, as opposed to loadModel or uses, with ClassRegistry the models are treated as singletons.

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that you are doing something wrong: you need access to a model that has nothing to do with your current controller.

There are plenty of conditions where you would need to access all of your models data, from one controller, but never a definitive answer on how to do it without breaking convention!