Error: Database table ts for model className was not found.

OK, I’m playing around with CakePHP and have been banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the error message which is the title of this post. For the benefit of those who come after me, let me explain what I’ve been doing wrong:

The problem was the models I was using. In my haste to get some drudge work out of the way quickly, I setup one of my models and – assuming I had done it correctly – copied and pasted for all my other models, changing the specifics as needed but basically assuming the same pattern. Well, the pattern was messed up.

If you’re specifying more options for a given relationship than just the name, you need to wrap the entire thing inside of an array(). This is what it should look like when correctly setup:

var $hasMany = array(
'Town' => array(
'className' => 'Town',
'foreignKey' => 'metro_ID',
'dependent' => 'false'
)
);
And this is the wrong way to set it up:

var $hasMany = 'Town' => array(
'className' => 'Town',
'foreignKey' => 'metro_ID',
'dependent' => 'false'
);