I’m using cakephp 1.2 and just spent a whole day figuring this out:

• Apparently, when you override the beforeSave on one of your models, you can’t update records anymore! So, you define the primary key in the data array, or you do something like $this->id = xpto but neither one works. You either keep creating new records or you get a SQL Error: 1062: Duplicate entry error.

I’m not sure of the program flow after a call to the save function, but I solved this by taking a look at model.php in the lib directory of cake. Calling the model exists() function solves the problem:

...
$this->id = $someId;
$this->exists();
...

This course of action lets me keep my custom beforeSave and update records as normal.

Hope this helps someone