cakephp contain association conditions issue

Question

I have the folowing associations

post->primary->secondary

$results = $this->Post->find('all', array(
    'conditions' => array(
        'Post.post_id =' => 2,
        'Primary.secondary_id !=' => null
    ),
    'contain' => array(
        'Primary' => array(
            'Secondary' => array(
                'conditions' => array('Secondary.short_code =' => 'code')
            )
        )
    )
));

Returns this.

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [Post] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 2
                    [created] => 2012-10-29 09:48:29
                    [modified] => 2012-10-29 09:48:29
                )

            [Primary] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 3
                    [secondary_id] => 6
                    [Secondary] => Array
                        (
                            [id] => 6
                            [short_code] => code
                            [created] => 2012-10-31 11:19:56
                            [modified] => 2012-10-31 11:20:03
                        )

                )

        )

However when I change

'conditions' => array('Secondary.short_code =' => 'code')

to

'conditions' => array('Secondary.short_code !=' => 'code')

it still returns the primary record, when I dont want it to.

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [Post] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 2
                    [created] => 2012-10-29 09:48:29
                    [modified] => 2012-10-29 09:48:29
                )

            [Primary] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 3
                    [secondary_id] => 6
                    [Secondary] => Array
                        (
                        )

                )

        )

Answer 1

It's hard to know exactly what you're hoping to achieve, but I THINK it sounds like you're trying to limit the 'Primary' results based on conditions against the 'Secondary' model.

If that's the case, you're going to need to use joins() instead of contain().

The reason: When you use CakePHP's Containable Behavior, it actually does separate queries, then combines the results before returning the data to you. Doing it this way is great in many ways, but it does not allow you to limit parent results based on conditions against it's children.

To do that, just use joins(). (CakePHP syntax which creates MySQL JOIN)