I am having troubling linking some of my models together. Users have one of three roles:
Information that is shared between the 3 roles is stored in a User table. When a User wants to change their role they make a role request that must be accepted by Admin.
What I am struggling with is that I cannot find a way of retrieving the data of a user without retrieving their role or their user data twice. If I retrieve the User object with recursive set to 2 I get the user data twice as it is also inside the Lecturer object. If I do the same with the Lecturer object I get the lecturer data twice as it is also inside the User object.
If I understood your question correctly, I'm guessing you're not using Contaible.
With that behaviour, you can do something like
$this->User->find('all', array('contain'=>'Lecturer'));
and that will retrieve an array similar to
[User] => array(/*user data*/),
[Lecturer] => array(/*Lecturer data*/)
Just remember to define your models as containable.
Don't use recursive. Set public $recursive=-1; in your AppModel, then use CakePHP's AMAZING ContainableBehavior to retrieve whatever data you'd like.