Accessing related data in view but with two different filters

Need Help
#1

Hello, I’ve got three tables:

Users
Topics (foreign key: user_id)
Post (foreign key: topic_id)

I’m building a dashboard (DashboardController) and in its index (index.tpl) I’d like to access two sets of data:

  1. All private Topics (Topics.isPrivate = 1) made by the current user
  2. All Posts in public Topics (Topics.isPrivate = 0) by the current user

I was told I could use collections for this and I’ve read the Book entry on it, I just don’t understand how to get this to work. I really hope somebody can help me with this.

#2

Hmm, I don’t think you need collection methods to accomplish this.

What’s wrong with making two queries, one for each set of data?

I’m not entirely sure why you think collection methods would be of help?