CakePHP pagination on custom route - php

Question

I obviously have a fundamental misunderstanding of how pagination works in CakePHP.
I have the following route set up which shows all posts in a category:
Router::connect('/:parent/:category',
array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'viewCategory'),
array('parent' => '[a-z0-9-]+', 'category' => '[a-z0-9-]+'));
The pages work fine, however the pagination helper is outputting the wrong links for pagination.
I'm using $this->Paginator->numbers().
It's outputting links in this format: mysite.com/posts/viewCategory?page=2
rather than like this: mysite.com/parent-category/sub-category?page=2.
I've tried adding the following route after the first one and it still doesn't work:
Router::connect('/:parent/:category/:page',
array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'viewCategory'),
array('parent' => '[a-z0-9-]+',
'category' => '[a-z0-9-]+',
'page' => '[0-9]+'));
For reference, my pagination options set in my view are as so:
<?php $this->Paginator->options(
array('url' =>
array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'viewCategory')
)); ?>
What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

You are setting the url yourself
This is your paginator options call:
<?php
$this->Paginator->options(array(
'url' => array(
'controller' => 'posts',
'action' => 'viewCategory'
)
));
?>
Where you are overriding the current url - and explicitly requesting that the paginator uses the the '/posts/viewCategory' url (with no arguments) as it's base url.
Just don't define the url
Simply don't call options and the helper will use the current url - that should mean that if the current url is:
/parent-category/sub-category
Then page 2 will be (assuming you are using the paramType option to use GET arguments rather than named parameters):
/parent-category/sub-category?page=2
If that's not the case there's information missing from the question; it's important to distinguish between "vanity routes not being used" and "the url is not equivalent (the current situation).

Answer 2

Just had a battle fixing something similar and came across this post. Though old, but I think my answer might save someone the time I had to spend fixing it.
Basically, what you need to do is call the Paginator->options() before Paginator->numbers(), thus:
$this->Paginator->options(
array(
'controller' => 'parent-category',
'action' => 'sub-category'
)
);
Though the controller and action do not exist, it just tricks CakePHP to use them "AS IS", since the reverse routing isn't working!
And for those (like me), who want have set up a route similar to
Router::connect(
'/go/page:id',
array(
'controller' => 'blog',
'action' => 'paginated'
)
);
There might be difficulty setting up the Paginator options. This, however, worked for me:
$this->Paginator->options(
array(
'controller' => 'go',
'action' => '/'
)
);
I guess you know why it worked ;)