I have a simple database of 'resources', each of which has a contact, category, host, and location. Each of these attributes is linked to the resources table by a field named contact_id, category_id, host_id, and location_id.

I'm probably doing this incorrectly, but:

In the the resource model:

var $belongs_to = array('contact', 'category', 'host', 'location');

In the contact, category, host, and location models:

var $has_many = 'resources';

Does Active Record assume that fields with names like these are foreign keys, or does one need to spell these out explicitly in the resources controller? I'm still working with the scaffold files, and right now I just want to see all fields list when I view listing.tpl (SELECT * FROM resources LIMIT 20) But right now, listing.tpl does not even return the contact_id, category_id, host_id, and location_id columns:

Resource columns: Array
(
[0] => title
[1] => description
[2] => abbrev
[3] => url
[4] => updated_at
[5] => created_at
)

After this I assume that I need to change the Find method to implement a join and get the values in the other tables...I'd like to know how to do this, too.

Thanks Bermi. Ok, I understand this approach (it seems similar to Rails), but when I tried this I received the following error:

Notice: Undefined property: Resource::$contact,category,host,location in /Users/pweil/akelos/lib/AkActiveRecord/AkAssociatedActiveRecord.php on line 256

Fatal error: Call to a member function getAssociatedFinderSqlOptions() on a non-object in /Users/pweil/akelos/lib/AkActiveRecord/AkAssociatedActiveRecord.php on line 256

Sorry to sound so lost -- it's a little hard finding one's way through this in the early going.

Ok, that works. Thanks Bermi! And thanks for all of your work on this project. - Peter

right now, unfortunately we dont have "eager loading of deep associations".