List posts that a user likes in CakePHP app

Question

I have two tables: Posts and Likes

And I'm trying to list the posts that the current logged in user likes. The method looks like the following:

$following = $this->Follower->listFollowing($this->Auth->user('id'));

$this->paginate = array('limit'=>20,'conditions'=>array('Post.id'=>array($following['Follower']['post_id']),'Post.status'=>array(1,2)),'order'=>array('Post.datetime'=>'desc'),
                        'contain'=>array('User','Answer'=>array('User'),'Tag'));

$this->set('posts',$this->paginate());

So basically what I'm trying to do is first query the following (likes) table for all matching rows to the user and then use this array of post ids in my find query to list posts that were in the query.

The listFollowing method in the Follower model looks like:

public function listFollowing($user_id)
    {
        return $this->find('all', array( 
            'conditions' => array('Follower.user_id'=>$user_id) 
        ));
    }

I'm currently getting an error like: Undefined index: Follower [APP/Controller/PostsController.php, line 94] So gonna presume that the way I'm trying to pass the list of post ids from the following in the find query is incorrect.

Can anyone help? Thanks

Edit: Doing a debug on $following gives:

array(
    (int) 0 => array(
        'Follower' => array(
            'id' => '4',
            'user_id' => '6',
            'post_id' => '136'
        ),
        'User' => array(
            'password' => '*****',
            'id' => '6',
            'username' => 'driz',
            'email' => '######'
        ),
        'Post' => array(
            'id' => '136',
            'user_id' => '8',
            'datetime' => '2012-09-11 15:49:52',
            'modified' => '2012-09-16 15:31:38',
            'title' => 'Test Content',
            'slug' => 'Test_content',
            'content' => 'Test Content',
            'status' => '1'
        )
    ),
   (int) 1 => array(
        'Follower' => array(
            'id' => '5',
            'user_id' => '6',
            'post_id' => '133'
        ),
        'User' => array(
            'password' => '*****',
            'id' => '6',
            'username' => 'driz',
            'email' => '######'
        ),
        'Post' => array(
            'id' => '134',
            'user_id' => '8',
            'datetime' => '2012-09-11 15:49:52',
            'modified' => '2012-09-16 15:31:38',
            'title' => 'Test Content 2',
            'slug' => 'Test_content_2',
            'content' => 'Test Content 2',
            'status' => '1'
        )
    )
)

Answer 1

Couple of questions:

• Did you checked what query is being executed? If it's executed then probably the method is correct.

• is $following being populated? what happens if you debug it?

• if you are retreiving with 'all' then the result will look like this:

Array(

    [0] => Array
        (
            [ModelName] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 83
                    [field1] => value1
                    [field2] => value2
                    [field3] => value3
                )

            [AssociatedModelName] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 1
                    [field1] => value1
                    [field2] => value2
                    [field3] => value3
                )

        )
)

So you'll never be able to find something at $following['Follower']. Check Cake's documentation for this

Based on you comments, if you need a list of id's try this inside your method:

public function listFollowing($user_id)
{
    return $this->find('list', array(
      'conditions' => array('Follower.user_id'=>$user_id) 
      'fields' => array('Follower.user_id'),
      'recursive' => 0);
}

The 'list' retrieve mode does exactlye that.

Answer 2

It is hard to guess the error with this limited information but I'm guessing that it's a PHP error related with your $following array.

Can you try putting debug($following) after your listFollowing() function call? So in the end, it should look like this:

$following = $this->Follower->listFollowing($this->Auth->user('id'));

debug($following);

$this->paginate = array('limit'=>20,'conditions'=>array('Post.id'=>array($following['Follower']['post_id']),'Post.status'=>array(1,2)),'order'=>array('Post.datetime'=>'desc'),
                        'contain'=>array('User','Answer'=>array('User'),'Tag'));

$this->set('posts',$this->paginate());

You will see what is returned from listFollowing() that is causing an index error. You can further debug it with that information. I can no longer help as there is no database schema, full code, the variables/situation that causes this problem, etc :)