title: CakePHP 2.1 - How to properly use DISTINCT in find()
body: <p>I have a question which is driving me crazy and I have to admit I am not that experienced in CakePHP. As mentioned in this question,
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1718482/using-distinct-in-a-cakephp-find-function">Using DISTINCT in a CakePHP find function</a>, using DISTINCT this way:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$this-&gt;Model-&gt;find('all', array('fields'=&gt;'DISTINCT field_name'));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>does not return DISTINCT values, instead it returns all rows. In fact, the DISTINCT here is completely pointless because, for some reason , CakePHP adds <code>TableName</code>.<code>id</code>in the SQL query (why?? can I remove the id reference??), effectively returning every DISTINCT primary key (=all rows=unhelpful). </p>
  
  <p>So, I still want to return the DISTINCT values of a particular field_name column. Can I not do it using just the find('all') or find('list') function? Is it really that the proper way of doing it using this Set::extract() function described in the link above? That appears to be a overly indirect solution by CakePHP, normally Cake make my life easier. :-) What is the proper way of using find and DISTINCT together? Maybe DISTINCT doesn't work for find()?</p>
  
  <p>Looking at the CookBook, they say: "A quick example of doing a DISTINCT query. You can use other operators, such as MIN(), MAX(), etc., in a similar fashion:"</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
      array(
          'fields' =&gt; array('DISTINCT (User.name) AS my_column_name'),
          'order' = &gt;array('User.id DESC')
      )
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Source: <a href="http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/retrieving-your-data.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/retrieving-your-data.html</a></p>
  
  <p>This indicates that DISTINCT should be possible to use, but what is what here?  Does (User.name) correspond to the field_name I want DISTINCT for or is my_column_name my field_name? </p>
  
  <p>Finally, has any of this changed when migrating from CakePHP 1.x to CakePHP 2.x? Ie are the answers for CakePHP 1.x seen on Stackoverflow still relevant?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>