CakePHP Pagination sort() on Related Models - sorting

Question

I have two models: Plans and PlanDetails.
Relationship is: PlanDetails hasMany Plans. Plans belongTo PlanDetails.
In the PlanDetails view.ctp, I am pulling in related Plans.
I am trying to sort the Plans by ANY field (I've tried them all), and I cannot get it working. I assume I am overlooking something very simple.
Here is my base code:
PlanDetail >> view.ctp:
...foreach ($planDetail['Plan'] as $plan_edit) :
$class = null;
if ($i++ % 2 == 0) {
$class = ' class="altrow"';
}...
<?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('Plan ID', 'Plan.id'); ?>...
...<?php echo $plan_edit['id']; ?>
plan_details_controller.php:
...function view($id = null) {
if (!$id) {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Invalid plan detail', true));
$this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
}
$this->PlanDetail->recursive = 2; // To run the editable form deeper.
$this->set('planDetail', $this->PlanDetail->read(null, $id));
$this->set('plan', $this->paginate('Plan'));
}...
I should add, no errors are being thrown and the sort() arrows on the ID field are showing as expected, but the sort order DOES not change when clicked either way.

Answer 1

Sorry, I'm not able to comment on the question itself, but I've noticed that in your action, you set planDetail to be the PlanDetail record you read (with recursive set to 2), and then you set plan to be the result of the paginate call.
Then, in your view template, you're iterating over $planDetail's contained Plan association, like this:
foreach ($planDetail['Plan'] as $plan_edit):
But in order to get the sorting and pagination done, you need to be displaying the results of the paginate call i.e. iterate over the records contained in $plan.
Do a debug($plan) in your view template to see what results you get there and to see if the records' ordering changes when you sort by different fields.
Also, perhaps you're using syntax I'm not aware of, but if you simply call $this->paginate('Plan') in your controller, I don't know that you're going to get only the related Plan records for your particular PlanDetail record. (There's nothing tying the $id passed into your view action with the Plan records.) You might need to add some conditions to the paginate call, like so:
$this->paginate['Plan'] = array('conditions' => array('Plan.plan_detail_id' => $id));
$this->set('plans', $this->paginate('Plan'));

Answer 2

Here is what I did to solve this. Based on some helpful direction from johnp & tokes.
plan_details/view.ctp:
...$i = 0;
foreach ($plan as $plan_edit) : // note $plan here.
}...
In my plan_details_controller.php view action:
$conditions = array("Plan.plan_detail_id" => "$id");
$this->set('plan', $this->paginate('Plan', $conditions)); // note "plan" in the first argument of set (this is required to pass the results back to the view). Also. The $condition is set to return ONLY plans that match the plan_detail_id of id (on the plan_details table).
And in my view, in order to get my results (because I changed the array name), I had to change the way I was getting the values to:
$plan_edit['Plan']['modified'] // note I placed ['Plan'] in front of these calls as the array called for this to get the data...
Well until the next problem! SOLVED.