Restrict a record from deletion if it has associated records

ex: Category has Many Article

You don't want to delete a Category if it has related Articles how to do that ?

Well the other way around is possible, you just set 'dependent' to true when you define the association:

$hasMany = array('Article'=>array('dependent'=> true));

now a category is deleted along with all its related articles. beforeDelete is called for every article ( to do some app clean up, ie. delete a dir etc..)

You still want to restrict ?
ok here it is:

if(!$this->Category->Article->hasAny(array('Article.category_id'=> $cat_id)))
{
$this->Category->del($cat_id);
}
Gotchas

This is a good work around, Unfortunetly there are cases where it's useless.
Supose we have another Model Called User.
User hasMany Categories
in the definition of User we've set 'dependent' to true,
which means when we delete a User all its categories will be deleted.
OH NO!! you say ? because those categories might have articles and if they are deleted they will leave orphan childs alone :(.
Tragedy, well not really:

function beforeDelete($id)
{ if(!$this->Article->hasAny(array('Article.category_id'=> $id)))
{
return true;
}
return false;
}
Ahhh I see a smile in your face now baby !
we use Category::beforeDelete so if 'dependent' is to true in any Model that hasMany Categories, thet category won't be deleted and we will save orphan childs, how charitable..Eh..just a last thingy, if the other models that hasMany Categories have exclusive set to true, beforeDelete won't be called.

Well what do you want, Black and White.