Top 50 CakePHP interview questions

Top 50
Interview Questions & Answers
in
CakePHP

2
Top 50 Interview Questions & Answers in CakePHP
Question : 1 What is CakePHP?
 CakePHP is a free, open-source, rapid development
framework for PHP. It’s a foundational structure for
programmers to create web applications. CakePHP goal
is to enable developers to work in a structured and rapid
manner–without loss of flexibility. CakePHP takes the
monotony out of web development.

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Question : 2 When CakePHP was Developed?
 CakePHP started at april 2005.When a Polish
programmer Michal Tatarynowicz wrote a minimal
version of a Rapid Application Framework in PHP,
dubbing it Cake.Cake php version 1.0 released in May
2006. (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CakePHP)

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Question : 3 What is the current stable version of CakePHP?
 2.5.4 (Released on 2014-09-02)
Question : 4 What is MVC in CakePHP?
 Model view controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern
used in software engineering.
Model: Database functions exist in the model
View: Design parts written here
Controller: Business Logic goes here
For Detail : MVC Architecture

5
Question : 5 Server requirements for CakePHP.
 An HTTP server (like Apache) with the following
enabled:
- Sessions
- mod_rewrite
 PHP 4.3.2 or greater. Yes, CakePHP works great in
either PHP 4 or 5.
 A database engine (right now, there is support for
MySQL 4+, PostgreSQL and a wrapper for ADODB).

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Question : 6 How to Install CakePHP?
Step1: Go to cakephp.org and download the latest version of
cakephp.
Step2: Cakephp comes in a .zip file,so unzip it.
Step3: Extract the files in the localhost in the desired folder
(for example:cakephp).
Step4: Open the browser and run the URL localhost/cakephp
Step5: Just Follow the instructions display on the page.

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Question : 7 What is the folder structure of CakePHP?
cakephp/
app/
Config/
Console/
Controller/
Lib/
Locale/
Model/
Plugin/
Test/
tmp/
Vendor/
View/
webroot/
.htaccess
index.php
lib/
plugins/
vendors/
.htaccess/
index.php/
README.md/

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Question : 8 What is the name of CakePHP database configuration file name
and its location?
 Default file name is database.php.default.
Its located at "/app/config/database.php.default".
To connect with database it should be renamed to
database.php
Question : 9 What is the first file that gets loaded when you run a
application using CakePHP? Can you change that file?
 bootstrap.php
yes it can be changed. Either through index.php , or
through .htaccess

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Question : 10 What is the use of Security.salt and Security.cipherSeed in
CakePHP? How to change its default value?
 The Security.salt is used for generating hashes. We
can change the default Security.salt value in
/app/Config/core.php.
 The Security.cipherseed is used for encrypt/decrypt
strings. We can change the default Security.cipherSeed
value by editing /app/Config/core.php.

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Question : 11 What are controllers?
 A controller is used to manage the logic for a part of your
application. Most commonly, controllers are used to
manage the logic for a single model. Controllers can
include any number of methods which are usually
referred to as actions. Actions are controller methods
used to display views. An action is a single method of a
controller.

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Question : 12 What is default function for a controller?
 index() function
 function beforeFilter()
Question : 13 Which function is executed before every action in the
controller?

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Question : 14 Using CakePHP, what all are drawbacks?
 It loads full application before it starts your task. Its not
recommended for small projects because of its resource
heavy structure.

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Question : 15 List some of the features in CakePHP.
 Compatible with versions 4 and 5 of PHP
 MVC architecture
 Built-in validations
 Caching
 Scaffolding
 Access Control Lists and Authentication.
 CSRF protection via Security Component.

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Question : 16 What is the naming convention in CakePHP?
 Table names are plural and lowercased
 Model names are singular and CamelCased: ModelName,
model filenames are singular: ModelName.php
 Controller names are plural and CamelCased with
*Controller* appended: ControllerNamesController,
controller filenames are plural and *Controller* appended:
ControllerNamesController.php

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Question : 17 What is Scaffolding in Cakephp?
 Scaffolding is a technique that allows a developer to
define and create a basic application that can create,
retrieve, update and delete objects.
Question : 18 How to add Scaffolding in your application?
To add scaffolding to your application, just add the $scaffold variable in the controller,
<?php
class PostsController extends AppController {
var $scaffold;
}
?>
Assuming you’ve created Post model class file (in /app/Model/post.php),
you’re ready to go. Visit http://example.com/posts to see your new scaffold.

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Question : 19 What is a Component in CakePHP?
 Components are packages of logic that are shared
between controllers. They are useful when a common
logic or code is required between different controllers.
Question : 20 What are commonly used components of CakePHP?
 Security
 Sessions
 Access control lists
 Emails
 Cookies
 Authentication
 Request handling
 Scaffolding

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Question : 21 What is a Helper?
 Helpers in CakePHP are associated with Presentation
layers of application. Helpers mainly contain presentational
logic which is availabel to share between many views,
elements, or layouts.
Question : 22 What are commonly used helpers of CakePHP?
 FormHelper
 HtmlHelper
 JsHelper
 CacheHelper
 NumberHelper
 Paginator
 SessionHelper
 RSS

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Question : 23 What is a Behavior?
 Behaviors in CakePHP are associated with Models.
 Behaviors are used to change the way models behaves
and enforcing model to act as something else.
Question : 24 What is the difference between Component, Helper and
Behavior?
 Component is a Controller extension,
 Helpers are View extensions,
 Behavior is a Model Extension.

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Question : 25 What is a Element?
 Element in CakePHP are smaller and reusable bits of
view code. Elements are usually rendered inside views.
Question : 26 What is a layout?
 Layout in CakePHP are used to display the views that
contain presentational code. In simple,views are
rendered inside a layout.

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Question : 27 How to set layout in the controller?
 var $layout = ‘layout_name’;
for a specific action, use below code in that action
 $this->layout =”layout_name”;
Question : 28 How to include helpers in controller ?
 public $helpers = array(‘Form’, ‘Html’, ‘Js’, ‘Time’);
for specific action, use below code in that action
 $this->helper[] =”helper_name”;

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Question : 29 How to include components in controller ?
 public $components = array(‘Emails’, ‘ImageUploader’,
‘Sms’);
Question : 30 How to write, read and delete the Session in CakePHP?
 $this->Session->write(‘Bird.Color’, ‘Black’);
 $black = $this->Session->read(‘Bird.Color’);
 $this->Session->delete(‘Bird’);

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Question : 31 What is the use of $this->set();
 The set() method is used for creating a variable in the view
file.Say for example if we write,
 $this->set('posts',$posts); in controller fie, then the variable
$posts will be available to use in the view template file for
that action.
Question : 32 What is the use of $this->set(compact());
 Using $this->set(compact()) , we can pass multiple
parameters to access into the view file.
For example,
$this->set(compact('posts','users','reports'));
 Now all these variables will be available in respective
view file.

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Question : 33 What are the advantages of each? Which would you use and
why?
 An advantage with first case $this->set('posts', $posts);
is that it allows two different names for the view file and controller
file. For example, you could write something like
$this->set('postData', $posts); Now the variable name in the
view file would be $postData.
 The advantage with the second approach , $this->set(compact());
is easier to write, and useful especially when we are setting
several variables to the view.No need to add separate line for
each variable as we have with $this->set();
For example,
 $this->set(compact('posts','users','reports'));

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Question : 34 Is it possible to have Multiple validation Rules per Field in
CakePHP?
 Yes its possible.

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Question : 35 What is wrong with the below validation rule?
'email' => array(
'rule' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty',
'message' => 'Please Enter Email address.'
),
'rule' => array(
'rule' => 'email',
'message' => 'Entered Email address is invalid.'
)
)

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Answer:
 The problem is the first rule notEmpty will never be called
because email rule will overwrite it.While using multiple
validation rules for the same field you must keep the rule
key "unique". In this case if we want to use multiple rules
then, we can simple change the rule key names like,
'email' => array(
'rule1' => array(
'rule' => 'notEmpty',
'message' => 'Please Enter Email address.'
),
'rule2' => array(
'rule' => 'email',
'message' => 'Entered Email address is invalid.'
)
)

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Question : 36 What is the difference between required and notEmpty in
CakePHP?
 To understand this question read this post:
difference between required and notEmpty
Question : 37 How to Get current URL in CakePHP?
 To get current url in CakePHP use,
echo Router::url($this->here, true);
 This will give full URL with hostname. If you want to get relative
path instead of full URL, then use the following code:
echo $this->here;
 This will produce absolute URL excluding hostname i.e.
/controller/abc/xyz/

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Question : 38 How can you make url’s search engine friendly while using
CakePHP?
 It's an automatic task that is done by CakePHP.
Question : 39 Can you list some database related functions in CakePHP?
 find, findAll , findAllBy , findBy , findNeighbours and
query.

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Question : 40 Which methods are used to create and destroy model
associations on the fly?
 The bindModel() and unbindModel() Model methods are
used to create and destroy model associations on the fly.
Question : 41 What is the use of requestAction method?
 The method requestAction is used to call a controller’s
action from any location and returns data from the
action.

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Question : 42 What is recursive in CakePHP?
 To understand this topic follow this post :
Recursive in CakePHP
Question : 43 How can we use ajax in CakePHP?
 By calling ajax helper and then using it in controller for
rendering.

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Question : 44 What is habtm?
 Has and belongs to many is a kind of associations that can
be defined in models for retrieving associated data across
different entities.
Question : 45 How CakePHP URL looks in address bar?
 http://example.com/controller/action/param1/param2/p
aram3

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Question : 46 How can you include a javascript menu throughout the site. Give
steps.
 By adding the javascript files in webroot and call them in
default views if needed everywhere or just in the related
views.
Question : 47 Why CakePHP have two vendor folder? what is the
difference between two vendors folder available in CakePHP?
 There will be two vendor folders available in CakePHP
framework. one in ” app ” folder and one in root folder
 The vendor folder in the app folder is used to place the
third-party libraries which are application specific.
 The vendor folder in the root folder is used to place the
third-party libraries which are used for multiple applications.

33
Question : 48 What is the default extension of view files in CakePHP? can we
change it? if yes then how?
 default extension of view files is '.ctp'.
 yes we can change it by writing public $ext = '.yourext'; in AppController.If you want to change it for
particular controller then add it into that controller only.You can also change it for the specific
action of the controller by putting it in that action of controller.
public $ext = '.yourext'; in AppController
- you can change all the views extentions.
public $ext = '.yourext'; in specific controller like, PostsController
- you can change all the views extentions of PostsController.
public $ext = '.yourext'; in specific controller action like, index()
- you can change the view extention of index.ctp
Note: You cannot specify multiple extensions, however it seems like there is a
fall back to .ctp if no .php file is found.

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Question : 49 How can you set custom page title for the static page?
 To set a custom page title, copy-paste following code
anywhere in your static page (.ctp) file:
 $this->set("title_for_layout", "My page title");
Question : 50 How to display the schema of the model?
 If you want to display the schema of particular model
then you just need to add the following single line of
code.
 For example we have “Posts” Controller.
pr($this->Post->schema());

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To learn more about CakePHP, start reading our CakePHP
Tutorials Series.
CakePHP Tutorials Series

36
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Top 50 CakePHP interview questions

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