Cakephp for beginners to advanced

Extensions of MVC

2009-06-03T22:31:00.007+05:30

First off all sorry for the long break with my new post.For the beginners i let you somthing more in MVC.There are additional things related to MVC of cakePHP. it will be very much helpfull when you are going to develop a full fleged web application using cakePHP.i take the refference from official cakePHP site.

Extension of Model(is called Behaviour):

It has some extra and usefull functinalities related with model.if i am start in details beginners will be get confused.i will show it's uses in my sample application later.For further refference you can visit http://book.cakephp.org/view/495/Core-Behaviors.

Extension of Controller(is called component):

This is basically class.when you want share a common logic in your application you have to develop component.for example image resize component.cakePHP has some basic built in core components:

Acl	The Acl component provides an easy to use interface for database and ini based access control lists.
Auth	The auth component provides an easy to use authentication system using a variety of authentication processes, such as controller callbacks, Acl, or Object callbacks.
Cookie	The cookie component behaves in a similar fashion to the SessionComponent in that it provides a wrapper for PHP's native cookie support.
Email	An interface that can be used to send emails using one of several mail transfer agents including php's mail() and smtp.
RequestHandler	The request handler allows you to introspect further into the requests your visitors and inform your application about the content types and requested information.
Security	The security component allows you to set tighter security and use and manage HTTP authentication.
Session	The session component provides a storage independent wrapper to PHP's sessions.

Extension of View(is called Helper):

Cake helpers are classes that help to decrease development time by providing shortcuts to
generate presentational elements. Earlier, we used the Cake form helper, which helps with
form element creation and data handling. cakePHP has some built in helper class.

Ajax	The AjaxHelper utilizes the ever-popular Prototype and script.aculo.us libraries for Ajax operations and client side effects.
Cache	The Cache helper assists in caching entire layouts and views, saving time repetitively retrieving data.
Form	The FormHelper is a new addition to CakePHP. Most of the heavy lifting in form creation is now done using this new class, rather than (now deprecated) methods in the HtmlHelper.
HTML	The role of the HtmlHelper in CakePHP is to make HTML-related options easier, faster, and more resilient to change.
Javascript	The Javascript helper is used to aid in creating well formatted related javascript tags and codeblocks. There are several methods some of which are designed to work with the Prototype Javascript library.
Number	The NumberHelper contains convenience methods that enable display numbers in common formats in your views.
Paginator	The Pagination helper is used to output pagination controls such as page numbers and next/previous links.
RSS	The RSS helper makes generating XML for RSS feeds easy.
Session	Maintain all sessions.
Text	The TextHelper contains methods to make text more usable and friendly in your views.
Time	It allows for the quick processing of time related information.
XML	The XML Helper simplifies the output of XML documents.

all the above information are taken from official cakePHP website.

cakePHP Convention

2009-05-07T10:26:00.000+05:30

In cakePHP we need to follow some rules defined by cake framework.we will go through this convention.First,we need to how to create,named model,view , controller and tables. it also provides global constants and functions.

Model Creation and Convention:

Convention:
1.Model class name should be singular and CamelCased(i.e every first letter of every word should be in upper case).Example: User,OnlineUser.

2. Model class page be 'user.php' or 'online_user.php'

3. This class file will be reside inside 'site_folder'->app->models

Syntax:
class User extends AppModel{
}

AppModel Class is defined inside the core cake directory.Model is related with table name.Each model has its associate table.one thing you need to remember that when you are creating a new table you also have to maintain some convention.

Table name Convention:

Table name will be plurals of its model name.

For 'User' model table name will be 'users' and OnlineUser table name will be online_users.

Controller Creation and Convention

Syntax:

Controller extends AppController {
       function index(){
       }

       function signup(){
       }

     }

?>

Convention:
1. Controller class name should be plural and CamelCased(i.e every first letter of every word should be in upper case) and end with 'Controller' Keyword.Example: UsersController,OnlineUsersController.

2. Controller class page will be 'user_controller.php' or 'online_users_controller.php'

3. This class file will be reside inside 'site_folder'->app->controllers

View Creation and Convention:

Convention:

1. View are actions names of it controller. for example UsersController has two action i.e:index and signup then it view files name will be index.thtml and signup.thml. Extension of these files may be .ctp.

2. These files will reside inside 'site_folder'->app->views.

3. For user you need to define a folder with plurals form inside view directory and inside this directory you need to save those view files.
i.e:'site_folder'->app->views->users.

We will discuss global constant and global functions later

Directory structure of cakePHP

2009-05-06T00:07:00.002+05:30

At first you need to download the framework from http://cakephp.org/. Try to download the stable release version.Unpack the zip folder.

you will find three folder:

app->application folder where all your code resides
cake->cakePHP Core Framework[dont touch it]
vendors->using for third party libraries

Now click on 'app' folder,see

there may be some other folders.lets forget it for now.

i am not going to show the other folder's inner structure.and also there are some other files inside the main folder.i.e index.php and .htaccess .these two files are important.

Please remind that when you are going to use any framewok, you need to maintain some convention.here in cake you see how the app folders shoul be.you also maintain some naming convention when creating model,views and controllers.we will discuss in details on the next post.

Cake PHP Fundamental

2009-05-04T18:59:00.000+05:30

What is CakePHP:

it is not a food. ha ha ha.! it is a framework with MVC supported.When you are
developing large web applications or creating components that you will reuse in many applications,
you’ll find Cake to be a great help.Cake-PHP is evolving frameworks provide rapid application development tools to promote the adoption of particular programming languages.

Features of CakePHP:

Here are some features of Cake that make web application development with it easy
and fast:
1. it uses MVC(Model-View-Controller) framework for PHP.

2. Easy to install on most popular platform i.e UNX,Windows.

3. SEO friendly URl.

4. it uses easy templating system(with using helpers).

5. it has ready components email,authentication,localization,access controll,security, sessions, and request handling etc.

6.it has some useful ready helpers view helper,javascript helper,ajax helper etc.

7. it supports database connectivity like mysql,postgreSQL,Oracle,MSSql.

And many more we will discuss as we read it step by step.

Model View Controller(MVC) Design Pattern:

The aims of MVC design is to modularaize an application into three parts:

Model:
Represents Data for the application.

View:
Represents the presention i.e design view.

Controller:
Act as interpreter between model and view

Not clear?
Ok, let see what happen:

Input -> Processing -> Output

Controller -> Model -> View

OOPS! liite bit confuse???????

Don't worry buddy.i am here to washup your brain for cakePHP. Believe me its really a nice framework.when you will understand how powerfull it is,you will start hating the kind of hard coding paradigm.