Question

In my project i have implement search option. Where we user should have to capability to search based on four fields namely “Zip, Street, City and State”. But none of these fields are mandatory.

I am confused with what conditions should i place in find().
So please help me.

Answer 1

I’m assuming that you’re having trouble because the form fields are optional, and you’re not sure how to build the conditions for your find. Here’s a simple way:

$conditions = array();
if (!empty($this->data['User']['zip'])) {
    $conditions[] = array('User.zip' => $this->data['User']['zip']);
}
if (!empty($this->data['User']['street'])) {
    $conditions[] = array("User.street LIKE '%{$this->data['User']['street']}%'");
}
... etc

Finally, you can append the conditions either strictly:

$this->User->find('all', array('conditions' => $conditions));

Or, loosely:

$this->User->find('all', array('conditions' => array('or' => $conditions)));

The second form places the OR operand between your WHERE conditions so that it returns any particular match. Start off here and increase the complexity of the search slowly.