Let's say that I have a cities table with a state_id field, and a states table with a country_id field, as well as a countries table that the country_id field points to. So in CakePHP terms, Cities belongsTo States, and States belongsTo Countries.
Without altering the tables themselves, how do I make it so that for all intents and purposes, States belongsTo Countries? In other words, what do I need to put in my table models to make it so that I can do:
$cityArray = $this->Cities->find('all', [ 'contain' => 'Countries' ])->toArray();
and have it return an array of Cities, each of which contains a Country, without having State contained in the array?
Right now I'm editing the array post-query to remove State and splice Country back onto the City, but I'm wondering if there's a more transparent way to do it.