Cake PHP useful tips: Great thing : bindModel

At present moment a have a lot of free time for self improvement and I can learn CakePHP deeper and deeper, as it possible ;-)

In one of my project I have two table with simple relation

Division (id, title) - hasMany Staff

Staff (id, division_id, name, jobtitle..)

So. Now I need to get some info like: I need to get all Staff where birthday today, and get result like:

Array (

   [0] => ["Division"] = Array ...

         => ["Staff"] = [0]

  [1] ...

But I don't want (or cann't) rewrite model fore staff/division. So, What I must doing?

Of cause I must to use this wonderful thing - bindModel ;-)

Look

$this->Division->bindModel(array("hasMany" => array ("Staff" => array (
"conditions" => array ("MONTH (birthday) = " . $month, "DAY (birthday) = " . $day),
"fields" => array ("Staff.id,Staff.name"),
"order" => array("Staff.name" => "ASC")))));
$staff = $this->Division->find("all");

Also, we can put in field "fields" something like this

"fields" => array ("COUNT (Staff.id) as count")

And we have array with Division and numbers (count of staff with correct birthday)

Simple? yep. And in good cakephp tradition ;-)