CakePHP :: afterFind() with non-primary model

Question

In this application, I have a Rental model which is central to the application. Rentals are associated with a Client, a Location, and a piece of Equipment. In almost all cases, I want to 'clean' the results, leaving only Rentals that are currently active. However, I don't want to do that in all cases, so what is the best methodology for flagging this?

My current thought is to add a Model variable ( $cleanRentals = true ), and set that flag to false when necessary, and to check the variable in afterFind() .

Answer 1

Protecting / cleaning data like this on associated models in Cake shows where Cake's model system is lacking. It gets messy.

But I would consider creating a custom finder, something like

$this->Rental->findActive();

Then you could just use that when you want to get only the active rentals.

See more: http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/retrieving-your-data.html#creating-custom-find-types