Planet CakePHP

CakePHP is great, I can’t imagine creating another web application without it or something similar to it. It’s just that sometimes you’ll think “This is how I’d do it normally… But with cake… mmmm.. maybe like this?”. Then if that didn’t work, you’re stuck.
Using the Auth component and trying to create a user account from another Controller that is NOT the “user” controller will lead to weird password hashing. In my experience.
If you want to create files in a certain folder in webroot, most of the time you just need to type in “foldername/file.txt” and not the full path. ie “pdf/stats.pdf” and not “/home/user/htdocs/app/webroot/pdf/stats.pdf”
No matter how many times i’ve used a HABTM relationship before, it still gives me a headache.  Sometimes I feel that sticking to two BelongsToMany relationships would be much easier.
If you have created and modified fields in your table, CakePHP will automatically update it if it does not have a value in the controller.
The manual actually has most of the answers you’re looking for. It’s just sometimes tells you in an obscure or indirect way.
If you want it saved, put it in an array. If that doesn’t save either, put that array in another array.