Selecting from table in different controller in cakephp

Question

In my Users controller I'm trying to display a given users's posts in their profile. How can I accomplish this? Basically, I'm in the Users controller trying to access the Posts table

These are my Tables

//Posts
id | body | user_id

//Users
user_id | username

This is my profile function of my users

  UsersController.php

  public function profile($id = null) {
    $this->User->id = $id;
    if (!$this->User->exists()) {  //if the user doesn't exist while on view.ctp, throw error message
        throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid user'));
    }
    $conditions = array('Posts.user_id' => $id);
    $this->set('posts', $this->User->Posts->find('all',array('conditions' => $conditions))); 
}


/Posts/profile.ctp     

<table>
<?php foreach ($posts as $post): ?>

    <tr><td><?php echo $post['Post']['body'];?>
    <br>

    <!--display who created the post -->
    <?php echo $post['Post']['username']; ?>
    <?php echo $post['Post']['created']; ?></td>
</tr>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</table>

I'm getting several "undefined index errors" in reference to each line of profle.ctp

Undefined index: Post [APP/View/Users/profile.ctp, line 11]

Answer 1

In your UsersController on your profile action, you can use the User model to access associated information.

Example:

class UsersController extends AppController {
    public function profile($id = null) {
        $this->User->recursive = 2;
        $this->set('user', $this->User->read(null, $id));
    }
}

In your User and Post model, you should have the correct associations setup:

User model:

class User extends AppModel {
    public $hasMany = array('Post');
}

Post model:

class Post extends AppModel {
    public $belongsTo = array('User');
}

You will see now that in your view, on the $user variable, you have all the user data for the specified profile id, along with associated posts for that user.

This page in the CakePHP documentation has some great helpful tips in reading your data from models.