Question

on several places in same controller i have code like:

$publications = $this->paginate('Publication', $conditions);

…where $conditions is array of conditions, which fields to select and how (using LIKE in mysql).

every one of them have different “Order by” statement.

how can i achieve that, and define different “order by” part of sql?

UPDATE (2011-03-11): this is part how i defined pagination:

$this->paginate = array(
        'limit' => 1, 
        'fields' => array('`Publication`.*, PublicationNumeration.*, Collection.*, Publisher.*, Publication.title as PublicationTitle'), 
        'joins' => array( array('table' => 'publication_numerations', 'alias' => 'PublicationNumeration', 'type' => 'LEFT', 'conditions' => array( 'Publication.id = PublicationNumeration.publication_id' ) ) ) 
        , 'order' => array('PublicationTitle desc')
      );

            $publications = $this->paginate('Publication', $conditions);
            $this->set(compact('publications', 'urlArgs'));

part with ‘limit’ works, but ‘order’ does not works, and does not show in debug mode at all.

Answer 1

You can override the pagination function for each time that you implement it in each different action. For example:

function list_recipes() {
    $this->paginate = array(
        'limit' => 10,
        'order' => array(
            'Recipe.title' => 'asc'
        )
    );
    $data = $this->paginate('Recipe');
    $this->set(compact('data'));
}

In your case, you’d probably want to reuse your $conditions array but alter the value of 'order' for each different implementation.

Further Reference: Pagination doc