# Limiting Association inside get function
**URL:** https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [July 7, 2023, 1:37pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323 "2023-07-07T13:37:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lamine](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Lamine)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 1:37pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/1 "2023-07-07T13:37:03Z")
Any way to limit associations inside get function?
$user = $this-\>Users-\>get($id, [
‘contain’ =\> [‘Articles’],
‘limit’ =\> 5 // isn’t working
]);
---
### Author:  [@KevinPfeifer](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/KevinPfeifer)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/2 "2023-07-07T16:44:18Z")
See [cakephp - How to limit contained associations per record/group? - Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30241975/how-to-limit-contained-associations-per-record-group)
and [cakephp - Using limit() on contained model - Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29775766/using-limit-on-contained-model)
---
### Author:  [@Lamine](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Lamine)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/3 "2023-07-07T20:53:02Z")
Thanks but those solutions didn’t work. Plus some of those are CakePHP 2 version.
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### Author:  [@Zuluru](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Zuluru)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2023, 3:39am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/4 "2023-07-08T03:39:50Z")
The first link given is pretty much the canonical answer to this question, so if it didn’t work, it seems likely that it’s a problem with how you’ve implemented it. Share what you ended up with by following that answer and maybe we can spot where you’ve gone wrong?
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### Author:  [@Lamine](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Lamine)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2023, 6:55am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/5 "2023-07-08T06:55:33Z")
In Users::view action. I’m trying to load the assocciated articles and limit them to only 5 records.
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### Author:  [@Zuluru](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Zuluru)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2023, 6:54pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/6 "2023-07-09T18:54:40Z")
There’s no reason why what you’ve tried would work. What I _think_ you’re trying to do is
```auto
'contain' => ['Articles' => ['limit' => 5]]
```
but that’s not supported. In the first link that Kevin gave, ndm has provided 6 possible solutions for this. What you’ve written here is nothing like any of them.
---
### Author:  [@Lamine](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Lamine)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2023, 7:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/7 "2023-07-09T19:41:44Z")
Yeah at first I tried:
‘contain’ =\> [‘Articles’ =\> [‘limit’ =\> 5]]. But it didn’t work. Going back to the docs get() function has ‘limit’ method and that’s exactly what I was trying in the code you see.
What ndm provided for hasMany scenario is a library solution
$this-\>hasMany(‘associatedTable’)
-\>setLimit(5);
And I don’t want to add that library to my project to only achieve this goal.
Any solution I tried and didn’t work I remove it that’s why the code is nothing like what ndm has provided.
---
### Author:  [@Zuluru](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Zuluru)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2023, 10:34pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/8 "2023-07-10T22:34:41Z")
Keep reading there. He provided a library solution, two different strategies using select, one using join, one using window functions, and one with a bit of a brute force method. If none of these options are acceptable to you, then you’re probably going to need to submit a PR to Cake which adds direct support for the functionality you want, and hope it gets accepted.
---
### Author:  [@dipakmewada](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/dipakmewada)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2023, 5:46am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/limiting-association-inside-get-function/11323/9 "2023-07-23T05:46:50Z")
Hi @Lamine ,
You can try using the strategy\_select option.
[https://api.cakephp.org/4.4/class-Cake.ORM.Association.html#STRATEGY\_SELECT](https://api.cakephp.org/4.4/class-Cake.ORM.Association.html#STRATEGY_SELECT)