How to implement a self referencing (parent_id) model in cakephp

Question

I have a table called categories. The table holds categories and their sub(subsub)categories...

Its an easy table:

• id
• parent_id
• title

Answer 1

Related question - assume I have a 3 level self-referencing hierarchy implemented as advised by @RichardAtHome - I understand when I try to find a particular Category it will also get me the parent category and all children categories. However how can I make it find the path back to root? Is there some clean trick to accomplish this or will require a custom hack?

I imagine using this in a scenarios where the Product table has one category ID associated with it but when displaying to users I would like to also display the entire parent chain so that they can see something like 'confectionaries/seasonal/nestle' - and then the user can alter the entire product hierarchy