One of the most powerful features of CakePHP is the ability to link relational mapping provided by the model. In CakePHP, the links between models are handled through associations.

Defining relations between different objects in your application should be a natural process. For example: in a recipe database, a recipe may have many reviews, reviews have a single author, and authors may have many recipes. Defining the way these relations work allows you to access your data in an intuitive and powerful way.

The purpose of this section is to show you how to plan for, define, and utilize associations between models in CakePHP.

While data can come from a variety of sources, the most common form of storage in web applications is a relational database. Most of what this section covers will be in that context.