This article is aimed at newbies to the CakePHP 3 framework.
I'm a fan of CakePHP, and was completely new to it about 9 months ago. Any framework takes some getting used to, but my biggest issue with Cake 3 is the manual. I feel it is written very much with a feeling of "you're familiar with Cake 2, so we don't need explain as much with this one".
Once you get used to using the framework however, it is a very rewarding framework, and luckily the IRC channel and cakephp-3.x tag on stack overflow is actively maintained, so you can work it out or get an answer pretty quickly.
Rather than moan about the manual, I thought I would post an example-based guide to the code generation feature, to help any other new-to-cake devs out there.
These examples are deliberately simple, they're just to get you started with the code generator, rather than just the basic list of commands currently available in the docs.
Before you use the bake command
- Create some tables, following CakePHP conventions
- Check you are in the root directory of your project, if you do a directory listing
lsyou should see folders "bin", "config", "src", "webroot"
Create a controller for a table called users
bin/cake bake controller Users
creates src/Controller/UsersController.php
Create a model (and entity) for a table called users
bin/cake bake model Users
creates src/Model/Table/UsersTable.php
creates src/Model/Entities/User.php
Create the default template files for a table (add/edit/view/index)
bin/cake bake template Users
creates src/Template/Users/index.ctp add.ctp edit.ctp view.ctp
Bake all of the above in 1 command
bin/cake bake all Users
Bake just the index template file
bin/cake bake template Users index
creates src/Template/Users/index.ctp
Baking for prefix folders (e.g. admin)
If you are baking for an admin section of your site, you will be using separate controller and template files
bin/cake bake controller Users --prefix admin
creates src/Controller/Admin/UsersController.php
bin/cake bake template Users --prefix admin
creates src/Template/Admin/Users/index.ctp edit.ctp add.ctp view.ctp
Bake from a different database
The previous examples all use the db connection defined in app.php as 'default'. If you have a legacy database for handling client records, e.g. db_records, your config file might look like this
// in config/app.php
'Datasources' => [
'default' => [
'host' => 'localhost',
'username' => 'db_user',
'password' => 'pass123',
'database' => 'db_application',
],
'records' => [
'host' => 'localhost',
'username' => 'db_records_user',
'password' => 'pass123',
'database' => 'db_records',
],
]
Create a model for a table called user_records in the records database
bin/cake bake model UserRecords -c records
creates /src/Model/Table/UserRecordsTable.php
creates /src/Model/Entities/UserRecord.php
This will include in your UserRecordsTable.php file
public static function defaultConnectionName()
{
return 'records';
}
Create a model from this database for a table not following cake convention, e.g. tbl_records_user
bin/cake bake model UserRecords -c records --table tbl_records_user
creates /src/Model/Table/UserRecordsTable.php
creates /src/Model/Entities/UserRecord.php
This will add the defaultConnectionName() and also set
$this->setTable('tbl_records_user');
There are other options you can set here, but some are easier to set by editing the file afterwards. But for example, you can also set the display field to be something other than the default, e.g. email
bin/cake bake model UserRecords -c records --table tbl_records_user --display-field email
This will modify the display field
$this->setDisplayField('email');
Associations
By default the bake command will look for associations. If you are using a legacy table, or a different datasource, any field headings that end in _id might cause a 'base table or view not found' error.
To avoid this you can bake without associations
bin/cake bake model UserRecords -c records --table tbl_records_user --no-associations
Baking with a plugin
Assume you have installed a plugin such as friendsofcake/BootstrapUI so that your template files are using Bootstrap styles by default
You can now add -t BootstrapUI to any of the above commands
Create the template files using the plugin
creates /src/Template/Users/index.ctp add.ctp edit.ctp view.ctp
bin/cake bake template Users -t BootstrapUI
Create the whole MVC skeleton (controller, table, entity, templates) using the legacy database
bin/cake bake all UserRecords -c records --table tbl_records_user -t BootstrapUI
Useful Features
Bake relies on the database connection, so to save you loading up and remembering all the tables in the system, you can call a command without specifying the table name to see a list of available tables. Let's say your database has 3 tables:
users
articles
activity_logs
Using the command bin/cake bake model will produce a list of available tables
bin/cake bake model
Choose a model to bake from the following:
Users
Articles
ActivityLogs
The same goes for:
bin/cake bake controller
bin/cake bake template
Hopefully if you're using CakePHP for the first time this is a useful reference for the bake console.
Top comments (6)
When I try to make a model using this command
bin/cake bake model Userserror 👇
bin/cake: No such file or directory
You should try bin\cake instead of the bin/cake on Windows OS. Or cd bin&&cake...
Are you in the project root folder? Have you run composer install?
Yes
nice one bro...
Thank you so much for sharing