CakePHP

In The Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Define The Problem In the past, I’ve done some freelance Web Development and Web Design for different clients. One question I’ve always had to ask myself is: How will the user be updating this website? That question is usually preempted by a question to the client: Do you have any HTML experience? I can count (on one hand) the number of times that I’ve heard a yes to this question.

This has always been a touchy subject, especially in larger computer firms. But first, let me tell you how I got into Open Source. I started coding in Turbo Pascal 7.0, in about 1996 when I was in Grammar School. I took Turbo Pascal more as an introduction to Programming, instead of a product to do something constructive in.

After Pascal, I was looking into something visual. Hence, I fell into Visual Basic 5.0. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.

Legal Issues

Now this was my first step towards the open source community. I must admit, that I downloaded a pirated copy and ran with it for a while. Now, that was all well and good when I was sitting home playing around with stuff. But when it came to actually, to producing something for a market, you can’t (or should I say, shouldn’t) do that with pirated software.

After that, I got into web development. For this, there was a plethora of free tools available, for use. So I did that for a while. When I got back to college, I got into C++ (using Visual Studio, but still essentially free). That was a step in the right direction. However, as the semesters went on, we got more into using the .NET library. However, for my web development I never got into ASP.

The First Real Plunge into Open Source - Enter PHP

Bit by bit, web development gave way to web programming. This is where PHP came in. I got more familiar with PHP when I started working on different projects for clients. I chose PHP for a few main reasons:

1. Free Documentation: I could learn almost everything I needed through online documentation.
2. Cost: My first problem was hosting. ASP hosts used to be almost twice as expensive as their Linux counterparts.

The Open Source Misconception

One of the problems that people have with Open Source is that they think that it’s unsupported. People seem to think that open source software is written by a bunch of kids in basements or something. This is not the case, by any means.  For example, a lot of the Linux distributions are totally free and totally supported.  Wake up people; free doesn’t mean unsupported. The whole “You get what you pay for” isn’t always true.

I must say, this was a major hurdle for me when I first started out with CakePHP. If you’re working with some data from a database, then it’s all Model-View-Controller magic. Your forms are automatic: $form->input() is pretty much all you need. Why is this? That’s because all the information about the fields (names, sizes, types, etc.) come straight from the database. You’re Out On Your Own The problem right now is that, you’re all on your own.

So here we have the timely battle that PHP faces. Frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of this. All in all, I’d have to agree with Jeff on this one, to a certain extent. They Say PHP Sucks You’ll hear the same claims every single time: “Google PHP Sucks you’ll see how much PHP sucks”. Oh please! This is some of what the haters usually use for the argument: “There are too many functions” PHP Isn’t OOP Everything is strung together - This claim usually talks about the interaction between PHP and/or SQL In Defense of PHP The number one claim is that everything in PHP feels like it’s clunky and may fall apart at any time.

So, you’ve been reading this blog for a while and you’re (hopefully) picking up very valuable tips on website and web application design. But just like all other do-it-yourself (DIY) projects, no amount of tips or tutorials in isolation is going to make you an expert. So you throw your hands up in say “I’m done with this web design crap!” But, you still need a website. So what do you do?

Somehow I don’t think most people understood what my bias comparison of CakePHP vs Ruby on rails meant. The last few visitors to comments seem to have been Rails fans. One of them seems to think that I shouldn’t touch Ruby on Rails with a ten foot pole and should stick with CakePHP. He doesn’t want someone like me in their community. The other comment, I get the opposite vibe from.

This is the third installment of my Auth Component Tutorial. This tutorial builds on the first installment, so make sure you grab the download file: CakePHP Auth 1 (4.3 KiB, 18,444 hits) You’ll find it on almost every popular web site’s login page; a nice lil' checkbox that says “Remember Me”. It seems to have become a basic addition to any page with a login form. Generally, when a user logs into a web site, he’s logged in until his session expires.

This is the second installment of my Auth Component Tutorial. I included a link to download a file for during the first installment: CakePHP Auth 1 (4.3 KiB, 18,444 hits) I just think that some of the stuff in there warrants some explanation. isAuthorized() This function is needed when $this-Auth->authorize = ‘controller’. Theory has it, you can do something similar in app_model if $this-Auth->authorize = ‘model’, but I haven’t looked into this.

First off, I would like to say much thanks to Gwoo for finally helping me to understand this thing. So I know what you’re thinking; I’m probably the last person to finally figure out the CakePHP’s Auth Component. For the past few months, I’ve been using obAuth because that’s the only authentication I could get to work with CakePHP. I think that I was just making it more difficult than it should have been.

So I guess the CakePHP development staff doesn’t take any holidays. Bright and early New Years Day 2008, we’re greeted with a fresh new release of CakePHP 1.2.6331 beta. No, not pre-beta a full blown beta. Needless to say I’m excited about this. There have been some nice changes which have gone through all through the Christmas season. Guys, I thank you for your dedication. The one major thing I’m excited about is the way that the Form Helper now processes dates and times; there’s no longer a cleanUpFields() function, everything is automatic (or should I say automagic).