The Bakery Everything CakePHP

This is a guide to using Haml in CakePHP instead of the normal .ctp/.thtml files. Note: this uses phphaml which is for PHP5.

First of all, download the HamlParser and HamlView from http://cakeforge.org/snippet/detail.php?type=package&id=35. Place HamlParser.class.php in the app/vendors/haml/ directory and place haml.php in the app/views/ directory. Create the directory app/tmp/haml and make it world-writable (chmod 0777). This is where the compiled php files are placed. Next, in your AppController, put var $view = 'Haml';. Now all view files with the extension '.haml' will be parsed as Haml. That's it!

Here's a sample Haml layout (app/views/layouts/default.haml):

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!!! Strict
%html
  %head
    %meta{ :http-equiv => 'Content-Type', :content => 'text/html;charset=utf-8' }
    %title= $title_for_layout
  %body
    #header
      %h1 hello
    #content= $content_for_layout
    #footer
      %span.author John Q. Caker

And here's a sample view (app/views/hello/index.haml):

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.hello
  %p Hello, world!
  = $html->link('This is a link to the home page', '/')

As you can see, using helpers inside Haml is no trouble at all.