Question

I have a query along the lines of this:

SELECT * FROM posts WHERE owner_id IN (SELECT owner_id FROM owners_list WHERE user_id = 1) ORDER BY modified DESC

What is the most efficient Cake find call that is equivalent? Thanks!

Answer 1

3 choices:

1) Cake does handle sub-queries, though it is complex:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/retrieving-your-data.html#sub-queries

Here’s a SO question that has an example:
Subquery in cakePHP to lookup in other table

2) Use a join statement:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/associations-linking-models-together.html#joining-tables

3) You can just use your query as-is via via Model::query() as long as you sanitize first

I prefer option 2 as it’s less prone to errors and I don’t have to worry about sanitizing/escaping. And once you get the hang of joins you’ll find yourself using them more often.