Constants

• An application can now easily define CACHE and LOGS, as they are conditionally defined by CakePHP now

Caching

• FileEngine is always the default cache engine. In the past a number of people have had difficulty setting up and deploying APC correctly both in cli + web. Using files should make setting up CakePHP simpler for new developers.

Components

Console

• The server shell was added. You can use this to start the PHP5.4 web-server for your CakePHP application.
• Baking a new project now sets the application’s cache prefix to the name of the application.
• Adding symlink resolution to app/Console/cake

I18n

• nld is now the default locale for Dutch as specified by ISO 639-3 and dut its alias. The locale folders have to be adjusted accordingly (from /Locale/dut/ to /Locale/nld/).
• Albanian is now sqi, Basque is now eus, Chinese is now zho, Tibetan is now bod, Czech is now ces, Farsi is now fas, French is now fra, Icelandic is now isl, Macedonian is now mkd, Malaysian is now msa, Romanian is now ron, Serbian is now srp and Slovak is now slk. The corresponding locale folders have to be adjusted, as well.
• Corrected the usage of domain translation for a few internal strings in validation rules.
• Now all translation functions can be overridden by declaring the function first.

Configure

• Configure::check() was added. This method works the same as CakeSession::check() does.

Exceptions

• CakeBaseException was added, which all core Exceptions now extend.
• The base exception class also introduces the responseHeader() method which can be called on created Exception instances to add headers for the response, as Exception responses don’t reuse any response instances.

Model

• Support for the biginteger type was added to all core datasources, and fixtures.
• Support for FULLTEXT indexes was added for the MySQL driver.
• Model::find(‘list’) now sets the recursive based on the max containment depth or recursive value. When find(‘list’) is used with ContainableBehavior.
• Added DboSource::resetSequence(). This allows datasources to reset sequence values in tables. This is useful for datasources like Postgres, and makes using fixtures much easier.
• DboSource::getLog() will now show the last 200 queries instead of the first 200.

Validation

• Missing validation methods will always trigger errors now instead of only in development mode.
• Added CakeNumber::fromReadableSize() and Validation::filesize()

Network

• Added enableCrypto() method to CakeSocket class
• TLS/SSL support was added for SMTP connections.

CakeRequest

• CakeRequest::onlyAllow() was added.
• CakeRequest::query() was added to access variables in the query string using dot notation.

CakeResponse

• CakeResponse::file() was added. This deprecates MediaView.
• When instantiating a CakeResponse, it will by default set its charset to App.encoding

CakeEmail

• The contentDisposition option was added to CakeEmail::attachments(). This allows you to disable the Content-Disposition header added to attached files.

Router

• Support for tel:, sms: were added to Router::url().
• Enable dot notation for passing plugin for routeClass parameter
• Routes are loaded as late as possible. As a consequence - routes will also work by default in the cli.

View

• MediaView is deprecated, and you can use new features in CakeResponse to achieve the same results.
• Serialization in Json and Xml views has been moved to _serialize()
• beforeRender and afterRender callbacks are now being called in Json and Xml views when using a view templates.
• View::fetch() now has a $default argument. This argument can be used to provide a default value should a block be empty.
• View::prepend() has been added to allow prepending content to existing block.

Helpers

CakeNumber

• CakeNumber::fromReadableSize() was added.
• CakeNumber::formatDelta() was added.
• CakeNumber::defaultCurrency() was added.

Folder

• Folder::copy() and Folder::move() now support the ability to merge the target and source directories in addition to skip/overwrite.

String

• String::tail() was added to truncate text starting from the end. ending in String::truncate() is deprecated in favor of ellipsis

Debugger

• Debugger::exportVar() now outputs private and protected properties in PHP >= 5.3.0.

Security

• Support for bcrypt was added. See the Security::hash() documentation for more information on how to use bcrypt.

A huge thanks to all involved in terms of both contributions through commits, tickets, documentation edits, and those whom have otherwise contributed to the framework. Without you there would be no CakePHP. Download a packaged release [3]