Greetings cake experts, I have a question that I think would really help a lot of people getting started with cakePHP. I have a feeling it will be easy for some of you, but it is quite challenging to me.

I have a simple database with multiple tables. I can't figure out how to make cakePHP display the values associated with a foreign key in an index view. Or create a view where the fields of my choice (the ones that make sense to users like location name - not location_id can be updated or viewed on a single page).

I have created an example at http://lovecats.cakeapp.com that illustrate the question. If you look at the page and click the "list cats", you will notice that it shows the location_id field from the locations table. You will also notice that when you click "add cats", you must choose a location_id from the locations table. This is the automagic way that cakePHP builds the app. I want this to be the field location_name.

The database is setup so that the table cats has a foreign key called location_id that has a relationship to a table called locations.

This is my problem: I want these pages to display the location_name instead of the location_id. If you want to login to the application, you can go to http://cakeapp.com/sqldesigners/sql/lovecats and the password 'password' to look at the db relationships, etc.

How do I have a page that shows the fields that I want? And is it possible to create a page that updates fields from all of the tables at once?

This is the slice of cake that I have been trying to figure out and this would REALLY get me over a hump. You can download the app and sql from the above url.