cakephp pagination and thin controller - php

Question

i am developing with cakephp (2.4.7) and i have problems with organizing my controllers and models to use pagination.
So far i put the most logic into the models (thin controller, big model). There i returned the results to the controller where i set the variables to display it on the view.
But now i want to use pagination. This break my concept because i can not use pagination inside the models.
Whats the best solution to solve this problem? I do not want to reorganzie my whole structure, because i need pagination in a lot of different actions and models.
For example:
Controller Users, action friends
public function friends($userid = null, $slug = null) {
$this->layout = 'userprofile';
$this->User->id = $userid;
if (!$this->User->exists()) {
throw new NotFoundException(__('Invalid User'));
}
$this->set('friends', $this->User->getFriendsFrom($userid));
}
User Model, function getFriendsFrom($user_from).. i need this method in different actions.
public function getFriendsFrom($user_from) {
$idToFind = $user_from;
$data = $this->FriendFrom->find('all',
array(
'conditions'=>array(
'OR'=> array(
array('user_to'=> $idToFind),
array('user_from'=> $idToFind)
),
'AND' => array(
'friendship_status' => 1
)
),
'contain' => array('UserFrom.Picture', 'UserTo.Picture')
)
);
$friendslist = array();
foreach ($data as $i) {
if ($i['FriendFrom']['user_from'] == $idToFind){
$friendslist[] = $i['UserTo'];
}
elseif ($i['FriendFrom']['user_to'] == $idToFind){
$friendslist[] = $i['UserFrom'];
}
}
return $friendslist;
}
Whats the best way to design this concept to use pagination?
Thanks

Answer 1

in Controller Users use cakephp Paginator
var $helpers = array('Paginator');
Now you call the following method
function index() {
$result = array(
'recursive' => -1,
'conditions' => array(...),
'contain' => array(...),
'limit' => '2'
);
// you can write the above code in your model
$this->paginate = $result;
$users = $this->paginate('User');
// Re-arrage $users
$this->set(compact('users'));
}
If any problem, let me know.