Unable to contain() same table multiple times using different aliases

[mehov]

Description

Say I have a join table where I map products to products, for example two counterparts of each other. (Please assume it makes sense.)

Then I want to select a pair of products out of that table. Each product belongsTo category, and finally each category belongsTo store.

In the join table where the product pairs are, I can define the association twice:

    $this->belongsTo('Products', [
        'foreignKey' => 'product_id',
        'joinType' => 'INNER',
    ]);
    $this->belongsTo('RefProducts', [
        'className' => 'Products',
        'foreignKey' => 'ref_product_id',
        'joinType' => 'INNER',
    ]);

But when I find() a product, attempting to contain its counterpart and its own containments, I don't get both sets of contained information. I'm assuming this is because the contained joins use the same aliases. I tried to overwrite the aliases for each individual contain, but it didn't work. My first attempt was the most obvious:

->contain([
    'Categories' => [
        'Stores' => [
        ]
    ],
    'ProductsProducts' => [
        'RefProducts' => [
            'Categories' => [
                'alias' => 'RefCategories',
                'Stores' => [
                    'className' => 'RefStores',
                ]
            ],
        ],
    ],
])

That resulted in The alias association is not defined. I tried a few more and then finally found a complete list of all accepted options:

cakephp/src/ORM/EagerLoader.php

Lines 53 to 65 in 27ef3b0

	protected array $_containOptions = [
	'associations' => 1,
	'foreignKey' => 1,
	'conditions' => 1,
	'fields' => 1,
	'sort' => 1,
	'matching' => 1,
	'queryBuilder' => 1,
	'finder' => 1,
	'joinType' => 1,
	'strategy' => 1,
	'negateMatch' => 1,
	];

Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be a way to manually set an alias for an individual contain?

CakePHP Version

4.4.14

PHP Version

8.3.1