How skinny should controllers be, how fat should models be in CakePHP?

Question

I know it's a good idea to put all data-related logic in your models in CakePHP, but what would you say about keeping every Model::find() and its particular params in the model? Is this good practice, or just taking things too far?

For example, is this:

PostsController:

function index() {
    $posts = $this->Post->getLatest();
    $this->set(compact('posts'));
}

Post model:

function getLatest() {
    $params = array(
        'conditions' => array('published' => 1),
        'limit' => 5,
        'order' => 'publish_date DESC'
    );
    return $this->find('all', $params);
}

Better than this:

PostsController:

function index() {
    $params = array(
        'conditions' => array('published' => 1),
        'limit' => 5,
        'order' => 'publish_date DESC'
    );
    $posts = $this->Post->find('all', $params);
    $this->set(compact('posts'));
}

Any thoughts? Which is better architecturally?

Answer 1

It's totally egilable to write shorthand-find functions. This way the controller is not depended of the model's parameters. I tend to go that far, that I don't use any fields directly in my controllers (and thus, not using find in controllers at all).
You could save a variable by defining the array in your find-call aswell ;).

Answer 2

I know this is an old question but i thought i'd share my experience.

I recently had an application where i was sick of defining all the Contain associations every time i wanted to get an a record. So i created an Application::getApplication($id); method that included all my Contains and their conditions.

This worked great, every time i wanted an application i just called this. unfortunately when i moved to production and had to deal with a lot more data this became too slow to use in a lot of places. I had to go back and change all the calls to getApplicaion() to usual finds where i could tweak the Contains parameter to only get what i needed.