Question

Lets say I have a Company model and Companies controller. Foreign keys in the company table include time_zone_id, station_id, state_id, city_id.

I had actions in the CompaniesController to add, edit, view Companies. For adding and editing, I need dropdown lists of all the foreign key associations (time zones, states, cities, stations). So in those actions, I find myself writing lots of the following for each action:

$this->set('cities', $this->Station->City->find('list'));
$this->set('states', $this->Station->State->find('list'));

etc…

Seems like a lot of code repetition. Is there a better way to go about this?

Answer 1

Add a pre-view callback such as afterFilter to your Companies controller:

function afterFilter() {
    // conditional ensures only actions that need the vars will receive them
    if (in_array($this->action, array('index', 'view', 'edit'))) {
        $this->set('cities', $this->Station->City->find('list'));
        $this->set('states', $this->Station->State->find('list'));
    }
}

afterFilter will be called after every Companies controller action.