Question

In my controller I have two functions that pull all records from the db with a status = 4. In one function it works fine. I copied the find all statement from the working function:

$this->set('completed', $this->Topic->find('all', array('fields' => array(
                    'Topic.creator','Topic.link','Topic.id', 'Topic.topic_name', 'Topic.info', 'Topic.priority', 'Topic.user_id',
                    'Topic.completed','Topic.created', 'Topic.status','User.name','User.id','Topic.category','Topic.tags'),'conditions' => array(
                    'Topic.status' => 4))));

But in the new function the $completed array doesn’t seem to exist. The debug statement is just a blank line. If I debug the sql log using debug($this->Topic->getDataSource()->getLog()); this is the returned array:

Array
(
[log] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
            (
                [query] => SELECT `Topic`.`creator`, `Topic`.`link`, `Topic`.`id`, `Topic`.`topic_name`, `Topic`.`info`, `Topic`.`priority`, `Topic`.`user_id`, `Topic`.`completed`, `Topic`.`created`, `Topic`.`status`, `User`.`name`, `User`.`id`, `Topic`.`category`, `Topic`.`tags` FROM `topics` AS `Topic` LEFT JOIN `users` AS `User` ON (`Topic`.`user_id` = `User`.`id`) LEFT JOIN `events` AS `Event` ON (`Event`.`topic_id` = `Topic`.`id`)  WHERE `Topic`.`status` = 4
                [affected] => 9
                [numRows] => 9
                [took] => 0
            )

    )

[count] => 1
[time] => 0
)

The SQL statement in the log works. If I plug in into mySQL it produces results. And the affected and numRows field show the correct number of records. But the produced data isn’t being set to variables. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. My boss and I are stumped. Here are both complete functions:

         public function dashboard(){
            $this->set('completed', $this->Topic->find('all', array('fields' => array(
                    'Topic.creator','Topic.link','Topic.id', 'Topic.topic_name', 'Topic.info', 'Topic.priority', 'Topic.user_id',
                    'Topic.completed','Topic.created', 'Topic.status','User.name','User.id','Topic.category','Topic.tags'),'conditions' => array(
                    'Topic.status' => 4))));
            $this->set('total_inprogress_release', $this->Topic->find('count', array('conditions' => array(
                    'OR' => array('status <>' => 4,'status <>' => 0),
                    'priority' => 4))));
    $this->set('upcoming_events', $this->Topic->Event->find('all'));
            $this->Topic->virtualFields['count'] = 'COUNT(*)';
            $this->set('graph_data', $this->Topic->find('chart', array('fields' => array('status_txt', 'priority_txt', 'count'), 'group' => array('status', 'priority'),
                    'chart' => array(
                            'xaxisTitle' => 'Status',
                            'yaxisLabels' => array('Release', 'Company', 'News'),
                            'xaxisLabels' => array('Open','In Progress','Completed'),
                            'yaxis' => 'Topic.priority_txt',
                            'xaxis' => 'Topic.status_txt',
                            'data' => 'Topic.count'
            ))));
    }

And here’s the nonworking function:

        public function completed(){
            $foo = $this->Topic->find('all', array('fields' => array(
                    'Topic.creator','Topic.link','Topic.id', 'Topic.topic_name', 'Topic.info', 'Topic.priority', 'Topic.user_id',
                    'Topic.completed','Topic.created', 'Topic.status','User.name','User.id','Topic.category','Topic.tags'),'conditions' => array(
                    'Topic.status' => 4)));
            debug($foo);
            debug($this->Topic->getDataSource()->getLog());


    }

Answer 1

After several hours of tracking the data until we figured out where it was being lost, we found that the problem was some of the data in the database. It was encoded and it was causing a while statement in the core cake files to reset when it encountered said data. The solution was to alter Config/database.php as such:
class DATABASE_CONFIG {

    public $default = array(
            'datasource' => 'Database/Mysql',
            'persistent' => false,
            'host' => 'localhost',
            'login' => 'login',
            'password' => 'Password',
            'database' => 'database',
            'prefix' => '',
            'encoding' => 'utf8',//this line allows the database to read utf8 data.
    );

}