The Bakery Everything CakePHP

In trying to find a way to manage all my code snippets, I finally settled on a solution that I think merits everyone's attention since it's so simple, so maintainable and so useful.

This idea is as follows, I set up a code library on my filesystem (I use windows, but this will work anywhere) with the following file structure:

Download code
D:/codelib/cake/
D:/codelib/cake/app/
D:/codelib/cake/app/controllers/
D:/codelib/cake/app/controllers/components/
D:/codelib/cake/app/models/
D:/codelib/cake/app/models/behaviors/
D:/codelib/cake/app/views/
D:/codelib/cake/app/views/helpers/
D:/codelib/cake/app/plugins/
D:/codelib/cake/app/vendors/


The idea here is that I have a copy of my cake app/ file structure where I can put code that I will reuse in all my applications. This method now will allow any files I put in this code library to be available in any cake application I make in the future.

The simplicity in this approach is outlined by this example; Suppose I made a "FileHandlerComponent", the use of this component would simply go as follows:

• Save my file_handler.php component file in D:/codelib/cake/app/controllers/components/file_handler.php
• In any of my cake applications, I would simply put the line "var $components = array('FileHandler');" in a controller and the FileHandler component will be loaded properly.

That's all!

To do this, first create the above code library file structure. Now create a file D:/codelib/cake/codelib.inc with the following contents (adjust directories appropriately):

Download code
<?php

$PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY = dirname(__FILE__) . DS;

$modelPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'models'.DS);
$behaviorPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'models'.DS.'behaviours'.DS);
$controllerPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'controllers'.DS);
$componentPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'controllers'.DS.'components'.DS);
$viewPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'views'.DS);
$helperPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'views'.DS.'helpers'.DS);
$pluginPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'plugins'.DS);
$vendorPaths = array($PATH_TO_CODE_LIBRARY.'app'.DS.'vendors'.DS);

?>


Once that is complete, all you have to do to make this code library available to your cake app is open your /app/config/bootstrap.php and put the following line in there:

Download code
include('D:'.DS.'codelib'.DS.'cake'.DS.'codelib.inc');


Now, when you enter the following code in your controller:

Download code
var components = array('FileHandler');


It will first check your application's /app/controller/components/ folder for a file_handler.php file. If it's there, it will use the local one, otherwise it will check in your code library to see if the file exists there.

The advantage of this is that now you can develop a library of application-wide software functionality using cake, and this library can be maintained via CVS or SVN, and no more copy-paste related synchronization issues!