Just started using Kohana... Have a few questions

I just started using Kohana a couple days ago, and I have a few questions that I cant seem to find an answer to anywhere.

Using ORM, how can you package information before you send it off? If I have a user model, and each user has a username, email, date of birth, etc... how can I package information (like add the users age as a property) before I send it to the controller?

Using ORM again, I see that if you select a user, you can also select all things related to that user (ie: articles, comments, etc.). How can you order that related information before sending it to the controller?

ie:

<?php
$user = ORM::factory('user', $id);
$user->articles; // holds all articles belonging to a user.

// how can you order those articles dynamically?

In the view, how can you get information about a user who is logged in? Do you use Auth (Auth::instance()->get_user()), or is there any other way?

Also, If you know any other tips/advice/qwerks about Kohana, please drop a line or two, you may answer a future question of mine.

Thanks.

Edit: Another question. Using the ORM, I want to be able to load all articles that posted, in which a user has made a comment.

comments table

comment_id
user_id
article_id
etc....

Using ORM, I can access all articles posted by a user, but how would I be able to access all开发者_StackOverflow articles in which the user has commented on?

Thanks

If you are using Kohana v3, you can order records like so:

$articles = ORM::factory('user', $id)->articles
                                     ->order_by('date', 'DESC')
                                     ->find_all();

If you are using Kohana v2, the same thing can be achieved using:

$articles = ORM::factory('user', $id)->orderby('date', 'DESC')
                                     ->articles;

And you were correct about accessing the user record through Auth::instance()->get_user() (if you are using the ORM Auth driver)