If you want to sort the data directly when it is fetched from db
You can define default order when adding relations between tables in your models. In your Survey model:
var $hasMany = array(
'Question' => array(
'order' => 'ordering DESC'
)
);
See http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/associations-linking-models-together.html#hasmany.
You can also define custom ordering when retrieving data from your controller in your conditional array, http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/retrieving-your-data.html#find:
$conditions = array(
'order' => array('Question.ordering DESC')
);
If you are paginating your result with the paginator component, you can setup it like in following example book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/components/pagination.html#query-setup:
public $paginate = array(
'order' => array(
'Question.ordering' => 'desc'
)
);
If you want to sort the data presented in the view
Here you can use the pagination helper (together with the pagination component in the controller) as:
echo $this->Paginator->sort('Question.ordering');
see book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/helpers/paginator.html#creating-sort-links
Sorry for removing 'http://' on the two last links, but I am not allowed to post more than two links (<10 rep).