We can put a search box in our project by using the cakephp component.

It is very useful and can provide highly functionality across the controller.

All you need to do is include component in your controller and call component function to fetch data.

This search component will be searching the parameter of the box and generate the condition and refine search.

You can download the component from the link below

http://download.designaeon.com/search2.0.rar

It is for 2x ver.

Now copy the search component in the component and include this in your controller.

public $components=array('Search');

Now create search form that can be used across the views.

<div class="search" style="margin: 10px;">
<fieldset>
<h2>Search <?php echo $this--->params['controller'] ?></h2>

<hr />

<?php echo $this--->Form->create(array('action' => 'contact', 'type' => 'GET')); ?>
<?php $name = isset($this--->params['url']['name']) ? $this->params['url']['name'] : null;
echo $this->Form->input('id', array( 'label'=>'ID','type'=>'text'));
echo $this->Form->input('name', array('label'=>'Name','value'=>$name));
echo $this->Form->submit('Search',array('class'=>'button'));
?>

<?php echo $this->Form->end(); ?></fieldset>
</div>

To create search component work fine with pagination we can create another element called set_pagination_named.ctp file which can be copied in this path.

http://C:\xampp\htdocs\your app name\app\views\elements\searchForm\set_pagination_named.ctp:

This element will check the search condition and pass them on to th the paginator.

[crayon-5704d3e5a3742984554998   lang="php" decode="true" ]<?php 
$data_arr=array(); 
 if(isset($this->params['url']) || isset($this->params['named'])){
 $data=isset($this->params['named'] ) && !empty($this->params['named']) ? $ this->params['named']:$this->params['url'];
 $possibledata=array('name','id');//possible fields
 foreach($data as $key=>$value){
    if(in_array($key,$possibledata) && !empty($value)){
  $data_arr[$key]=$data[$key];
 }
}

}
?>
<?php $this->Paginator->options(array(
'evalScripts' => true,
'url'=>$data_arr
));
?>

Now we create the controller action.

You can create this on any function where you would like to use the search component.

say for ex contact

This is there in you contact function

function contact() {
$this->Page->recursive = 0;
$conditions=$this->Search->getConditions();
$this->set('pages', $this->paginate(null,$conditions));
}

When you will search the parameter it will going to show all the search result by search component.

Now we create the contact.ctp

</pre>
[crayon-5704d3e5a3764360706114   lang="php" decode="true" ]<div class="pages contact">
<?php
echo $this->element('searchForm/set_pagination_named');//set pagination named element 
?>
<?php 
echo $this->element('searchForm/form') ?>//search form element
?>
	<h2><?php __('Pages');?></h2>
	<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
	<tr>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('id');?></th>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('parent_id');?></th>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('name');?></th>			
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('slug');?></th>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('status');?></th>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('created');?></th>
			<th><?php echo $this->Paginator->sort('modified');?></th>
			<th class="actions"><?php __('Actions');?></th>
	</tr>
	<?php
	$i = 0;
	foreach ($pages as $page):
		$class = null;
		if ($i++ % 2 == 0) {
			$class = ' class="altrow"';
		}
	?>
	<tr<?php echo $class;?>>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['id']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td>
			<?php echo $this->Html->link($page['ParentPage']['name'], array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'view', $page['ParentPage']['id'])); ?>
		</td>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['name']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['slug']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['status']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['created']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td><?php echo $page['Page']['modified']; ?>&nbsp;</td>
		<td class="actions">
			<?php echo $this->Html->link(__('View', true), array('action' => 'view', $page['Page']['id'])); ?>
			<?php echo $this->Html->link(__('Edit', true), array('action' => 'edit', $page['Page']['id'])); ?>
			<?php echo $this->Html->link(__('Delete', true), array('action' => 'delete', $page['Page']['id']), null, sprintf(__('Are you sure you want to delete # %s?', true), $page['Page']['id'])); ?>
		</td>
	</tr>
<?php endforeach; ?>
	</table>
	<p>
	<?php
	echo $this->Paginator->counter(array(
	'format' => __('Page %page% of %pages%, showing %current% records out of %count% total, starting on record %start%, ending on %end%', true)
	));
	?>	</p>

	<div class="paging">
		<?php echo $this->Paginator->prev('<< ' . __('previous', true), array(), null, array('class'=>'disabled'));?>
	 | 	<?php echo $this->Paginator->numbers();?>
 |
		<?php echo $this->Paginator->next(__('next', true) . ' >>', array(), null, array('class' => 'disabled'));?>
	</div>
</div>

Now the new search box will be create to search by using search component.