CakePHP - Overview

CakePHP is an open source MVC framework. It makes developing, deploying and maintaining applications much easier. CakePHP has number of libraries to reduce the overload of most common tasks. Following are the advantages of using CakePHP.

CakePHP - Installation

Installing CakePHP is simple and easy. You can install it from composer or you can download it from github − https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/releases. We will further understand how to install CakePHP in WampServer. After downloading it from github, extract all the files in a folder called “CakePHP” in WampServer. You can give custom name to folder but we have used “CakePHP”.

CakePHP - Folder Structure

Take a look at the following screenshot. It shows the folder structure of CakePHP.
The following table describes the role of each folder −

CakePHP - Configuration

CakePHP comes with one configuration file by default and we can modify it according to our needs. There is one dedicated folder “config” for this purpose. CakePHP comes withdifferent configuration options.

CakePHP - Email Configuration

Email can be configured in file config/app.php. It is not required to define email configuration in config/app.php. Email can be used without it; just use the respective methods to set all configurations separately or load an array of configs. Configuration for Email defaults is created using config() and configTransport().

CakePHP - Routing

Routing maps your URL to specific controller’s action. In this section, we will see how you can implement routes, how you can pass arguments from URL to controller’s action, how you can generate URLs, and how you can redirect to a specific URL. Normally, routes are implemented in file config/routes.php. Routing can be implemented in two ways −

CakePHP - Generating URLs

This is a cool feature of CakePHP. Using the generated URLs, we can easily change the structure of URL in the application without modifying the whole code.

url( string|array|null $url null , boolean $full false )

The above function will take two arguments −

CakePHP - Controllers

The controller as the name indicates controls the application. It acts like a bridge between models and views. Controllers handle request data, makes sure that correct models are called and right response or view is rendered. Methods in the controllers’ class are called actions. Each controller follows naming conventions.

CakePHP - Views

The letter “V” in the MVC is for Views. Views are responsible for sending output to user based on request. View Classes is a powerful way to speed up the development process.

CakePHP - Extending Views

Many times, while making web pages, we want to repeat certain part of pages in other pages. CakePHP has such facility by which one can extend view in another view and for this, we need not repeat the code again. The extend() method is used to extend views in View file. This method takes one argument, i.e., the name of the view file with path. Don’t use extension .ctp while providing the name of the View file.

CakePHP - View Elements

Certain parts of the web pages are repeated on multiple web pages but at different locations. CakePHP can help us reuse these repeated parts. These reusable parts are called Elements − help box, extra menu etc. An element is basically a mini-view. We can also pass variables in elements.

CakePHP - View Events

There are several callbacks/events that we can use with View Events. These events are helpful to perform several tasks before something happens or after something happens. The following is a list of callbacks that can be used with CakePHP.

CakePHP - Working with Database

Working with database in CakePHP is very easy. We will understand the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations in this chapter. Before we proceed, we need to create the following users’ table in the database.

CakePHP - View a Record

To view records of database, we first need to get hold of a table using the TableRegistry class. We can fetch the instance out of registry using get() method. The get() method will take the name of the database table as argument. Now, this new instance is used to find records from database using find() method. This method will return all records from the requested table.

CakePHP - Update a Record

To update a record in database we first need to get hold of a table using TableRegistry class. We can fetch the instance out of registry using the get() method. The get() method will take the name of the database table as an argument. Now, this new instance is used to get particular record that we want to update.

CakePHP - Delete a Record

To delete a record in database, we first need to get hold of a table using the TableRegistry class. We can fetch the instance out of registry using the get() method. The get() method will take the name of the database table as an argument. Now, this new instance is used to get particular record that we want to delete.

CakePHP - Services

Authentication

Authentication is the process of identifying the correct user. CakePHP supports three types of authentication.

• FormAuthenticate − It allows you to authenticate users based on form POST data. Usually this is a login form that users enter information into. This is default authentication method.
  

CakePHP - Errors and Exception Handling

Failure of system needs to be handled effectively for smooth running of the system. CakePHP comes with default error trapping that prints and logs error as they occur. This same error handler is used to catch Exceptions. Error handler displays errors when debug is true and logs error when debug is false.

CakePHP - Logging

Logging in CakePHP is a very easy task. You just have to use one function. You can log errors, exceptions, user activities, action taken by users, for any background process like cronjob. Logging data in CakePHP is easy − the log() function is provided by the LogTrait, which is the common ancestor for almost all CakePHP classes.

CakePHP - Form Handling

CakePHP provides various in built tags to handle HTML forms easily and securely. Like many other PHP frameworks, major elements of HTML are also generated using CakePHP. Following are the various functions used to generate HTML elements.