filter HABTM-associated model with conditions

Question

preamble: a few days ago I asked a question to solve a HABTM-filter, I'm not able to do it even with tutorials, so "Obi Kwan Kenobi youre my only hope".

What I want to achieve: Filtering Staff by GroupID which is used in StaffStaffgroup

I'm having the following tablelayout

• staffs (a person can belong to many groups)
• staff_staffgroups (HABTM-linking table)
• staffgroups (has a groupname)

The variable $tmp gets me a working array, but the problem is that Staff is a child object of StaffStaffgroups. I could parse throu and reassemble a array, but this isnt a nice solution. So I want to use the condition on Staff (see comented line) but then I get the error 1054 "column not found: 1054 Unknown column". I tried to bind and unbind, but no result there.

$group_id = 2;
$tmp = $this->Staff->StaffStaffgroup->find('all',
        array('conditions' => array(
            'StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id' => $group_id,
            'Staff.isActive =' => "1",
            'Staff.last_name LIKE' => "%$name%",
            )
         )
);

debug($tmp);

---

//$tmpConditions['AND'][] = array('StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id' => $group_ids);

---

EDIT:

I tried it with conditions and containable behaviour, but unfortunatelly its not filtering anything at all

    $this->Staff->contain(array('StaffStaffgroup'));
    $this->paginate = array('StaffStaffgroup' =>array(
                                    array('conditions'  => array(
                                            'StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id' => '2'
                                        )
                                    )
                                )
    );

• I added to all models: public $actsAs = array('Containable');

• I tried also with an inner join but no filtering there:

   $this->paginate = array( 
   'conditions' => array('StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id' => 2 ),
   'joins' => array(
      array(
          'alias' => 'StaffStaffgroup',
          'table' => 'staff_staffgroups',
          'type' => 'INNER',
          'conditions' => 'StaffGroup_id = StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id'
      )
   )
  

  );

Answer 1

You cannot use the Containable behavior for this. Checkout the sql dump, you will see that the query is done.

I would do it in two steps

From StaffStaffgroup get the staff ids that belongs to the group you want

$staff_ids = $this->Staff->StaffStaffgroup->find(
    'all', 
    array(
        'conditions' => array('StaffStaffgroup.staffgroup_id' => $group_id, ),
        'recursive' => -1,
        'fields' => array('StaffStaffgroup.staff_id'),
    )
);

Then get all staff using the previous result

$staffs = $this->Staff->find(
    'all', 
    array(
        'conditions' => array(
            'Staff.id' => $staff_ids, 
            'Staff.isActive =' => "1",
            'Staff.last_name LIKE' => "%$name%",
        ),
    )
);

Answer 2

You should look into the Containable behaviour.

http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/behaviors/containable.html

This will allow you to query your Staff model and contain your StaffStaffgroup model, giving you the array organised in the way you want.

Answer 3

I realize this question was asked a long time ago but my comment could still help someone else finding this post.

I created a behavior that creates the proper joins to the HABTM association behind the scenes making you able to use conditions on the HABTM-model.

Example

The model:

<?php
class Product extends AppModel {

    public $actsAs = array(
        'FilterHabtm.FilterHabtm',
        'Containable' // If you use containable it's very important to load it AFTER FilterHabtm
    );

    public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
        'Category' => array(
            'className' => 'Category',
            'foreignKey' => 'product_id',
            'associationForeignKey' => 'category_id',
            'with' => 'CategoryProduct'
        )
    );

}

The controller:

(The following is made possible by the behavior)

<?php
class ProductsController extends AppController {

    public $name = 'Products';

    public function index($categoryId = null) {
        $products = $this->Product->find('all', array(
            'conditions' => array(
                'Category.id' => $categoryId // Filter by HABTM conditions
            )
        ));
    }

}

Please see this url for download and complete usage instructions: https://github.com/biesbjerg/FilterHabtm