How do I exclude records from an associated model in CakePHP?

Question

I'm creating a Q&A application in CakePHP, and I want to exclude my associations in some cases. Imagine the following:

I'm listing all questions on the first page using $this->Question->findAll();. Since I have the following association in my model:

public $hasMany = array('Answer' =>
        array('className' => 'Answer',
            'order' => 'Answer.created DESC',
            'foreignKey' => 'post_id',
            'dependent' => true,
            'exclusive' => false,
        )
    );

All answers will get selected at the start page, which is not optimal. How could i do to exclude the answers in this particular method?

Thanks

Answer 1

I quick look at the CakePHP API reveals that you've got an unbindModel method on the Model. So in you example you can do this:

$this->Question->unBindModel(array('hasMany' => array(’Answer’)))

Alternatively, you can use the Containable behaviour to only select the pieces from MySQL that you require for the current page view.