Paginator->sort() using joined model does not work - join

Question

My models association chain:
ArchitectPurchase belongsTo ArchitectProfile belongsTo User
My action:
$this->ArchitectPurchase->recursive = -1;
$this->ArchitectPurchase->Behaviors->attach('Containable');
$this->paginate['joins'] = array(
array(
'table' => 'architect_profiles',
'alias' => 'ArchitectProfileJoin',
'type' => 'inner',
'conditions' => array(
'ArchitectProfileJoin.id = ArchitectPurchase.architect_profile_id'
)
),
array(
'table' => 'users',
'alias' => 'User',
'type' => 'inner',
'conditions' => array(
'User.id = ArchitectProfileJoin.user_id'
)
)
);
$this->paginate['order'] = 'User.name DESC';
$this->paginate['contain'] = array(
'ArchitectProfile' => array(
'fields' => array('ArchitectProfile.id'),
'User' => array(
'fields' => array('User.name')
)
)
);
$this->set('architectPurchases', $this->paginate());
This action works fine, ordering the results by User.name DESC. But when I use the link created with
echo $this->Paginator->sort('User.name')
in my view, it does not work!
Looking at the core files, I found that the validateSort method of the PaginatorComponent was the problem:
if ($object->hasField($field)) {
$order[$alias . '.' . $field] = $value;
} elseif ($object->hasField($key, true)) {
$order[$field] = $value;
} elseif (isset($object->{$alias}) && $object->{$alias}->hasField($field, true)) {
$order[$alias . '.' . $field] = $value;
}
As the User model is not directly associated with the ArchitectPurchase model, I get
$order = array()
instead of
$order = array('User.name' => 'asc')
I tried to use the $whitelist parameter, but still not working...
So I had to hack the core (noooo!!!), commenting from line 345 to 363 to make it work.
Am I doing something wrong or is this a 2.2.1 issue?

Answer 1

Thanks for posting this, I was actually having the same issue and with your insight of the problem I was able to solve it.
I posted a ticket on the issue tracker of CakePHP if anyone is interested, but basically they said it won't be fixed and offered two recommendations to bypass the problem.
The way I fixed it is I forced the model to be related with the one that has the field I'm interested in order by.