Introduction

Installation

• Install XAMPP, change port to 81
• Web server is in c->xampp->htdocs which is the place where the program will run through localhost:81
• Download Composer.phar by using the following console command line in the htdocs directory

php -r "readfile('https://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php
php composer.phar create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app myblog

• If Composer is installed globally in the machine by using composer.exe then use the following comand line in the htdocs directory

composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app myblog

Note

• This command will create a folder in htdocs called myblog with the required files to run a CakePHP project
• To run the app go to localhost:81/myblog

Naming Conventions

• Files and class names

  • Filenames are underscored (my_cake_class.php)
  • Class names are CamelCased (MyCaseClass)
  • Controller class names and files end with “controller”

• Models & Databases

  • Model class name are singular and CamelCased (User)
  • Table names corresponding to models are plural and underscored(users)
  • You can use inflector to check singular and plural words(category and categories)
  • Foreign keys are recognized by default as the singular name of the related table followed by _id (user_id)
  • Tables where models interact will require a singular primary key to uniquely identify each row

• Controllers

  • Controller class names are plural and CamelCased and ends with “controller” (UsersController)
  • Index() is the default method in a controller
  • yourapp.com/welcome will call the welcome controller and the index() method

• Views

  • Template files should be named after the controller functions that they display
  • The doThis() function of the UsersController class looks for a template in src/Template/Users/do_this.ctp

• Example

  • Database table: “articles”
  • Table class: ArticlesTable, found at src/Model/Table/ArticlesTable.php
  • Entity class: Article, found at src/Model/Entity/Article.php
  • Controller class: ArticlesController, found at src/Controller/ArticlesController.php
  • View template, found at src/Template/Articles/index.ctp

Routing

• Routing maps URLs to controller actions
• Routing helps URLs look much better and perform better in search engines
• Apache’s mod_rewrite is not required for routing but makes things look neater
• Default route pattern: http://example.com/controller/action/param1/param2..

Helpers

• Helpers are component-like classes for the presentation layer of the application
• Presentation logic is shared between views or layouts
• To use a helper, add it to the controller’s helpers array
• var $helpers = array(‘Form’,’Html’,’Javascript’,’Time’);

Helpers List
Ajax	Number	XML	Cache
Paginator	Form	RSS	HTML
Session	JS	Text	Javascript
Time

Components

• Components are packages of logic shared between Controllers
• CakePHP comes with a core set of components that can be loaded into the controller at any time
• Components usually have some sort of configuration in the $components array of the controller’s beforeFilter() method

Core Components
Security	Authentication	Sessions
Request Handler	Access Control list	Emails
Cookies

Plugins

• CakePHP allows you to combine controllers, models and views together to package as a “plugin” that others can use in their Cake applications
• Plugins are tied to an application only by configuration. Otherwise, plugins operate in their own space.
• Stored in /app/plugins

Scaffolding

• Scaffolding allows developers to generate a very basic application that can perform CRUD(create, read, update and delete) operations
• Scaffolding just needs a model and controller
• Scaffolding is great for development or just to get something up and running but using it too much will cause a loss of flexibility