The Bakery Everything CakePHP

For the past few weeks, I have been working with CakePHP to develop a new application. Because I do not want to code all the data entry screens yet, I was researching how to custom bake my controllers and views.
First thing I have done is to remove the code that generates the bar stripes and replace it with jquery doing the same. First part of customization was to add a default.ctp in my app/views/layouts. Added
$this->Html->script(array('jquery-1.4.2.min','jquery.tools.min')); before the echo $scripts_for_layout; line.

Further I have added a script to slide the flash messages up and have the bar stripes in the tables and forms.
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
    //This works.
    //TODO Change to a nicer jquery plugin over the page
    if ( $('#flashMessage').text() != '') {
      setTimeout(function() {
         $('#flashMessage').slideUp(400);
     }, 3000);};
     //TODO this needs to be designed to be more specific, its too general purpose now.
     $('tr:odd,dt:odd').addClass('altrow');
 });

</script> The Session->flash message was also moved after the content_for_layout, this was to avoid the jquery animation to scroll the whole screen.

<div id="content">
  <?php echo $content_for_layout; ?>
  <?php echo $this->Session->flash(); ?>
</div>
This was pretty easy, so it inspired me to change the baked screens more. First there is no cancel button in the baked forms. I saw this old post http://fat-tier.blogspot.com/2008/09/cancel-button-for-form.html that reminded me that having cancel button would be a nice thing. Being the efficient (read: lazy) person that I am, I was not about to manually add that code to all my view and controllers. So after some research and head scratching, I figured that a folder under app/vendors/shells/templates is necessary for custom view and controller generation. I named the folder and created two more folders under it. actions and views. Copied the same folders from the cake/console/templates. Edit the controller_actions from the actions folder to add the checking for cancellation and flashing the information in all the necessary parts.
<?php
/**
 * Bake Template for Controller action generation.
 *
 * PHP versions 4 and 5
 *
 * CakePHP(tm) : Rapid Development Framework (http://cakephp.org)
 * Copyright 2005-2009, Cake Software Foundation, Inc. (http://cakefoundation.org)
 *
 * Licensed under The MIT License
 * Redistributions of files must retain the above copyright notice.
 */
?>

 function <?php echo $admin ?>index() {
  $this-><?php echo $currentModelName ?>->recursive = 0;
  $this->set('<?php echo $pluralName ?>', $this->paginate());
 }

 function <?php echo $admin ?>view($id = null) {
  if (!$id) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
   $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Invalid %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName) ?>'));
   $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
<?php else: ?>
   $this->flash(sprintf(__('Invalid %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
  }
  $this->set('<?php echo $singularName; ?>', $this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->read(null, $id));
 }

<?php $compact = array(); ?>
 function <?php echo $admin ?>add() {
    if (array_key_exists('cancel', $this->params['form'])) {
        $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Adding new %s has been cancelled', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
        $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
    }
    else {
  if (!empty($this->data)) {
   $this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->create();
   if ($this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->save($this->data)) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
    $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('The %s has been saved', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
    $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
<?php else: ?>
    $this->flash(sprintf(__('%s saved.', true), '<?php echo ucfirst(strtolower($currentModelName)); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
   } else {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
    $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('The %s could not be saved. Please, try again.', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
<?php endif; ?>
    }
    }
  }
<?php
 foreach (array('belongsTo', 'hasAndBelongsToMany') as $assoc):
  foreach ($modelObj->{$assoc} as $associationName => $relation):
   if (!empty($associationName)):
    $otherModelName = $this->_modelName($associationName);
    $otherPluralName = $this->_pluralName($associationName);
    echo "\t\t\${$otherPluralName} = \$this->{$currentModelName}->{$otherModelName}->find('list');\n";
    $compact[] = "'{$otherPluralName}'";
   endif;
  endforeach;
 endforeach;
 if (!empty($compact)):
  echo "\t\t\$this->set(compact(".join(', ', $compact)."));\n";
 endif;
?>
 }

<?php $compact = array(); ?>
 function <?php echo $admin; ?>edit($id = null) {
  if (!$id && empty($this->data)) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
   $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Invalid %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
   $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
<?php else: ?>
   $this->flash(sprintf(__('Invalid %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
  }
    if (array_key_exists('cancel', $this->params['form'])) {
        $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Editing %s has been cancelled', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
        $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
    }
    else {
  if (!empty($this->data)) {
   if ($this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->save($this->data)) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
    $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('The %s has been saved', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
    $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
<?php else: ?>
    $this->flash(sprintf(__('The %s has been saved.', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
   } else {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
    $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('The %s could not be saved. Please, try again.', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
<?php endif; ?>
    }
    }
  }
  if (empty($this->data)) {
   $this->data = $this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->read(null, $id);
  }
<?php
  foreach (array('belongsTo', 'hasAndBelongsToMany') as $assoc):
   foreach ($modelObj->{$assoc} as $associationName => $relation):
    if (!empty($associationName)):
     $otherModelName = $this->_modelName($associationName);
     $otherPluralName = $this->_pluralName($associationName);
     echo "\t\t\${$otherPluralName} = \$this->{$currentModelName}->{$otherModelName}->find('list');\n";
     $compact[] = "'{$otherPluralName}'";
    endif;
   endforeach;
  endforeach;
  if (!empty($compact)):
   echo "\t\t\$this->set(compact(".join(', ', $compact)."));\n";
  endif;
 ?>
 }

 function <?php echo $admin; ?>delete($id = null) {
  if (!$id) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
   $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Invalid id for %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
   $this->redirect(array('action'=>'index'));
<?php else: ?>
   $this->flash(sprintf(__('Invalid %s', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
  }
    if (array_key_exists('cancel', $this->params['form'])) {
        $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('Deleting of %s has been cancelled', true), '<?php echo strtolower($singularHumanName); ?>'));
        $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
    }
    else {
  if ($this-><?php echo $currentModelName; ?>->delete($id)) {
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
   $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('%s deleted', true), '<?php echo ucfirst(strtolower($singularHumanName)); ?>'));
   $this->redirect(array('action'=>'index'));
<?php else: ?>
   $this->flash(sprintf(__('%s deleted', true), '<?php echo ucfirst(strtolower($singularHumanName)); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
  }
<?php if ($wannaUseSession): ?>
  $this->Session->setFlash(sprintf(__('%s was not deleted', true), '<?php echo ucfirst(strtolower($singularHumanName)); ?>'));
<?php else: ?>
  $this->flash(sprintf(__('%s was not deleted', true), '<?php echo ucfirst(strtolower($singularHumanName)); ?>'), array('action' => 'index'));
<?php endif; ?>
  $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
 }
 }
Did changes in the form.ctp  to add the save and cancel buttons. Just after the closing fieldset tag

<div class="button">
<?php
  echo "<?php echo \$form->submit('Save', array('div'=>false, 'name'=>'submit')); ?>\n&nbsp;\n";
  echo "<?php echo \$form->submit('Cancel', array('div'=>false, 'name'=>'cancel')); ?>\n";
  echo "<?php echo \$this->Form->end();?>\n";
 ?>
</div>
Changed the views to remove the 'id' fields too.  Although Ids are important, they are important to the program(computer) not the application user. As a matter of fact the more, I can remote the id from the user's perception the better.

Result of all this exercise is that my views are now cleaner, (no more $i++ lines) and they behave the way I want.

I am very happy to be using CakePHP and that there is such a good code generation tool as part of the code.

Hope this article was useful to you! Please leave feedback in the comments below.
richard.scoop@gmail.com