Cakephp, ordering associated tables.

Question

Hi,

When I search a model which "has many" of something else.

For example a blog post has many categories.

When searching for blog post with categories associated, how do I order the associated categories? When the array is returned it ignores the order on the category model and defaults to it's usual id order.

Cheers.

Answer 1

You can specify the order attribute of the find method parameters. Otherwise, it will default to the order for the top-most/parent Model. In your case the Category.id.

Answer 2

You can do this with the ContainableBehavior:

$this->Post->find('all', array('contain' => array(
    'Category' => array(
        'order' => 'Category.created DESC'
    )
)));

http://book.cakephp.org/view/1325/Containing-deeper-associations

Answer 3

In addition you can set the order in your model's relation.

<?php
class Post extends AppModel {
  var $hasMany = array(
    'Category' => array(
        'className' => 'Category',
        ...
        'order' => 'Category.name DESC',
        ....
    ),
}?>