Some CakePHP usefull Tips while development

Posted on Sunday, September 25, 2011 by Cakephp4U


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I’ve been playing around with CakePHP for the last several days. I’m beginning to enjoy using it through the CLI (Command Line Interface) tools that comes with the framework. Maybe because I spent too much time on the command line thanks to the CR-48 (Chrome OS) developer mode :) . Anyway, here are some tips I found while learning this easy to use PHP framework:
  1. During the development, it’s a good practice to change the default value for CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH both in the index.php and test.php of webroot directory in case you forgot when deploy to the server. For example, I changed the value of this constant to $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . DS . ‘cakephp’ which is converted into localhost/cakephp. Once I deployed the application to the server, the included path will change to robbychen.com/cakephp without any modification.
  2. According to the 1.2 documentation, each database has its own form control and data type relationship. For example, the tinyint data type for MySQL generates the checkbox control, whereas the boolean data type for SQLite also generates the checkbox control. It also applies to the latest stable version of CakePHP 1.3.
  3. If you want additional database options, you can download datasources plugin. This plugin also contains sqlite3 which, for some reasons, haven’t included with the CakePHP core yet. If you’re going to use SQLite in the framework without this plugin or just specify sqlite in the database config file, it will use version 2 instead.
  4. This is probably a bug in CakePHP: The CakePHP console cannot find the sqlite database file unless it’s in the root of the application folder, whereas the CakePHP web application looks for the file in the webroot directory of the application folder. The database configuration cannot be simply changed to webroot/database.sqlite. If it changes to that value, the console could find it (webroot/database.sqlite) but the web application could not (webroot/webroot/database.sqlite). The solution I decided is to make a link at the root folder to link to the sqlite file in the webroot directory. This way could both benefit the console and web application. It however does not suitable for some of you who are working on both the localhost and the production server, or often change folder, since the link target cannot be edited. The link will break once the whole directory is moved to a different machine or the target file was renamed or moved.
  5. Type cake api [type] [method] in the command line to browse through the CakePHP documentation. It is a very helpful command for use as a reference. However, you may learn some new tricks through this command, or you could use this as the primary learning resource for CakePHP assume that you already knew this command before you learn something else. For example, I found something useful for my project in the Ajax API: cake api helper ajax
I hope these tips help you to become more productive with CakePHP. If you have any questions regarding the above tips, feel free to post them in the comment below.

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How to create a new Custom CakePHP Template

by Cakephp4U

Custom CakePHP Template Creation


So, I hope by far you have downloaded CakePHP (A.K.A. 'Cake'), installed it, changed security settings and connected to database.

You have seen the messages in the welcome screen has changed after each of your action.

Now you will note the following:
Editing this Page
1. To change the content of this page, create: APP/views/pages/home.ctp.
2. To change its layout, create: APP/views/layouts/default.ctp.
3. You can also add some CSS styles for your pages at: APP/webroot/css.
Create DEFAULT Home Page


So, I created a new folder called 'pages' under app/views/ . And then I created a new file (using any text editor) and saved that file as 'home.ctp' under 'app/views/pages/'.

Now point your browser to:
http://caketest.local/

You can see all the messages are gone!!! You can see this is a nearly empty page!

As the name says, 'home.ctp' is the default homepage for your website. You can write anything here (with HTML tags). Those will be displayed at your homepage.

Create Default LAYOUT

Now create another new file (using any text editor) and save it as 'default.ctp' under 'app/views/layouts/' folder.

'default.ctp' is the default layout to display your content. If it is empty, CakePHP will display nothing. This is exactly what you see after saving default.ctp - a completely blank page!!!

Do not worry!

Just copy and paste the following code in the newly created 'default.ctp' file.

--: BEGIN COPY :--


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
  <?php echo $html->charset(); ?>
  <title>
  <?php __('My-CakePHP Tutorials'); ?>
  <?php echo $title_for_layout; ?>
  </title>
  <?php
  echo $html->meta('icon');


echo $html->css('cake.generic');


echo $scripts_for_layout;
  ?>
  </head>
  <body>
  <div id="container">
  <div id="header">
  Header Elements Will Go Here
  </div>
  <div id="content">


<?php $session->flash(); ?>


<?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>


</div>
  <div id="footer">
  Footer Text Goes Here!
  </div>
  </div>
  <?php echo $cakeDebug; ?>
  </body>
  </html>




----: END COPY :---


I have used red color to mark things you should note.
Change 'My-CakePHP Tutorials' to the title of your website. Like 'My Pet Dog Roombiq', or, anything you want.

NOTE:
There are FOUR IMPORTANT VARIABLES
$title_for_layout
$scripts_for_layout
$content_for_layout
$cakeDebug


The name suggests exactly what they do.
NOTE: 1
$title_for_layout MUST be included in between <title>  </title> tag.

<title>
  <?php echo $title_for_layout; ?>
</title>

As such, CakePHP gives a default title to every content page of your website following its own rules. But you can set a custom title as well. I'll show that in the next page.

NOTE: 2
$scripts_for_layout MUST be included before the closing </head> tag.


NOTE: 3
$content_for_layout MUST be included in between <body>
</body> tag.
<body>
<?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>
</body>

NOTE: 4
$cakeDebug SHOULD be placed before closing </body>

<?php echo $cakeDebug; ?>
</body>

AND you are done! You can add any CSS style/'div' layer to this page ('default.ctp') to give your website the layout/look you want.


For example, I tried a simple TWO Column Layout.
<div id="content">
  <div id="menu-box">
  menu items go here!
  </div>
  <div id="content-box">
<?php $session->flash(); ?>
<?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>
  </div>
</div>

I have added one div layer 'menu-box' and another one 'content-box' to display menu items and content items in two separate columns.
Now I need to add these CSS styles in a stylesheet file.

Modifying Stylesheet


As such Cake ('short-form of CakePHP) has already told us how to do that:
You can also add some CSS styles for your pages at: APP/webroot/css.
You can see the default CSS file under 'app/webroot/css' folder. The name of the file is 'cake.generic.css'. You can simply modify the content of this file (cake.generic.css).

I preferred to go to the bottom of that page and type the following lines


/* Custom CSS */


#menu-box{
width:250px;
float:left;
}
#content-box{
width:700px;
float:left;
}
It gives me a workable presentation for my custom template.

But I really need to make some more changes.

So, I just pressed (Ctrl+U) to view the source code, and I located the CSS division layers/ HTML tags being displayed in the source code, and modified them.

Here is the code: (Remember: I added the code at the bottom of cake.generic.css file.)


/* Custom CSS */
#menu-box{
width:250px;
float:left;
border-right:1px solid #CCCCCC;
}
#content-box{
margin-left:10px;
width:700px;
float:left;
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
padding:10px;
background-color:#F3F3F3;
}
#header {
height:100px;
width:100%;
color:#000000;
background-color:#b5fad1;
font-size:2.0em;
border-bottom:1px solid #cccccc;
}
body
{
background-color:#FFFFFF;
color:#000000;
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

#footer
{
text-align:center;
}
..............................................................
And here is my custom template:













So, I have once again DONE that! If you are following me, you MUST have done so as well.

Congratulations!

Next, I'll try to create my 'About us' page using CakePHP. In general, I think this will give me some idea on how to create a static page with CakePHP.


Custom CakePHP Template, Cakephp Templates, Cakephp Custom Template Development

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CakePHP Timezone Helper with jQuery

Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 by Cakephp4U


If you are using the updated Timezone Helper for CakePHP you can help your visitors to select a right timezone by guessing their system’s timezone and preselecting an option in the drop-down list. Insert this scriptBlock in your view:
$(document).ready(function() {
  function get_time_zone_offset( ) {
    var visitortime = new Date();
    var visitortimezone = -visitortime.getTimezoneOffset() / 60;
    var val = (visitortimezone > 0) ?
      "+" + visitortimezone.toString() + ".0":
      visitortimezone.toString() + ".0";
 
    return val;
  }
  $("#UserTimezone").val( get_time_zone_offset() );
});

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