CakePHP is a modern PHP framework for rapid web development. It is based on the MVC pattern and favors convention over configuration for simplified setup and development. Some key features include an ORM, form generation, validation, authentication tools and plugins. CakePHP aims to provide a structured way to build applications quickly without sacrificing flexibility. The CakePHP community is active with online resources and regular events to support users.

1. CakePHP
Build fast, grow solid.

2. Walther Lalk
CakePHP core team member
Croogo core team member
Lead Software Developer at
Troop Scouter at 9th Pretoria (Irene) Air Scouts
Husband github.com/dakota
@dakotairene
waltherlalk.com

3. What is CakePHP?

4. What is CakePHP?
CakePHP is a modern, free, open-source, rapid development framework
for PHP. It's a foundational structure for programmers to create web
applications. Our primary goal is to enable you to work in a structured
and rapid manner–without loss of flexibility. CakePHP takes the
monotony out of web development.

5. CakePHP?
•One of the original PHP frameworks, dating from late 2004
•An opinionated MVC framework
•Convention over configuration
•Encourages DRY coding principles
•Aims to solve 80% of the problem, and then stay out of your way

6. CakePHP?
•Active and friendly community
•A core team of highly motivated and experienced developers
•Long support life cycles for major releases
•Backwards compatibility between minor releases

7. A short history lesson
CakePHP
project started
Early 2005
1.0 released
May 2006
2.0 released
October 2011
3.0 released
March 2015

8. A new brand for a new era
•PHP world has matured greatly since CakePHP 1.0 and 2.0
•An updated, modern re-imagining of CakePHP was needed with greater
interoperability with the rest of the PHP eco-system
•PHP-FIG (CakePHP was a founding member)
•Composer
•Components
•CakePHP 3.0 was released at CakeFest 2015
•A new, modern brand was announced at CakeFest 2016

10. CakeFest
•Annual CakePHP conference
•Soon to be twice annually
•2 days of workshops (With a
beginner and advanced track)
•2 days of talks from industry
experts and local developers

11. CakePHP Community
•Active, supportive and helpful community
•CakePHP Forum – discourse.cakephp.org
•Slack and IRC – cakesf.herokuapp.com
•Stackoverflow
•Large eco-system of plugins and packages
•Regular live training sessions – training.cakephp.org
•An awesome full-time community manager – community@cakephp.org
•@cakephp

12. CakePHP 3
•A new ORM that is powerful, flexible and lightweight
•Simple Form generator
•Internationalization out the box (And it makes sense)
•Standards complaint (PSR-2, 3, 4 and soon 7)
•Middleware oriented stack

13. Standalone packages
•You can use bits of CakePHP without using CakePHP
•Separate components that can be used in any PHP project
cakephp/cache
cakephp/event
cakephp/validation
cakephp/orm
cakephp/collection

14. Collections
use CakeCollectionCollection;
$items = [
['id' => 1, 'name' => 'foo', 'parent' => 'a'],
['id' => 2, 'name' => 'bar', 'parent' => 'b'],
['id' => 3, 'name' => 'baz', 'parent' => 'a'],
];
$combined = (new Collection($items))->combine('id', 'name', 'parent');
// Result will look like this when converted to array
[
'a' => [1 => 'foo', 3 => 'baz'],
'b' => [2 => 'bar']
];

15. Collections
<?php
$items = ['a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3];
$collection = new Collection($items);
$new = $collection->map(function ($value, $key) {
return $value * 2;
});
// $result contains ['a' => 2, 'b' => 4, 'c' => 6];
$result = $new->toArray();

16. Powerful ORM and query builder
Looks and feels like SQL (Mostly)
$query->select(['name', 'email'])->where(['status IN' => ['active', 'pending']])->orderDesc('created');
$premium = $users->find('active')->find('premium'));
$subscribers = $users->find('active')->find('subscribedToNewsletter');
$query = $users->find()->select(['id'])->where(['is_active' => true]);
$anotherQuery->innerJoin(['stuff' => $query]);
$anotherQuery->where(['id IN' => $query]);
$recipients = $premium->append($subscribers)->extract('email');
Queries can be composed
Everything can be an expression
Queries are collections

17. Filtering by associations
// UsersTable
public function findWithArticlesNewerThanUser(Query $query, $options)
{
$userDate = $this->find()
->select(['created'])
->where(['id' => $options['userId']]);
return $query
->matching('Articles', function ($q) use ($userDate) {
return $q->where(['created >=' => $userDate]);
});
}

18. Post-processing
public function findInContinentGroups(Query $query)
{
$query->formatResults(function ($results) {
return $results->groupBy('continent');
});
return $query;
}
"Africa": [
{
"name": "Angola"
},
{
"name": "Burundi"
},
{
"name": "Benin"
},
{
"name": "Burkina Faso"
},
],
"America": [...

19. Map-reduce
$mapper = function ($article, $key, $mapReduce) {
if (stripos('cakephp', $article['body']) === false) {
return;
}
$words = array_map('strtolower', explode(' ', $article['body']));
foreach ($words as $word) {
$mapReduce->emitIntermediate($article['id'], $word);
}
};
$reducer = function ($occurrences, $word, $mapReduce) {
$mapReduce->emit(count($occurrences), $word);
}
$articlesByStatus = $articles->find()->mapReduce($mapper, $reducer);

20. Map-reduce
// Result
[
'cakephp' => 100,
'awesome' => 39,
'impressive' => 57,
'outstanding' => 10,
'mind-blowing' => 83
]

21. PSR-7 support
•3.3 introduced a PSR-7 compatible middleware stack
•Both request and response objects are immutable
•Application level request/response objects are not PSR-7 (Yet!)

22. Middleware
CORS
Exceptions
Assets
Routes
App

23. Middleware
CORS
Exceptions
Assets
Routes
App
Request
Response

24. Middleware
CORS
Exceptions
Assets
Routes
AppRequest
Response

25. Rules to follow
•Must accept a Request, Response and ‘next’
•Must return a Response or call ‘next’
Doesn’t have to be limited to the CakePHP eco-system
For example, https://github.com/oscarotero/psr7-middlewares has a collection of
generic middleware classes.

26. Middleware setup
$middleware = new CakeHttpMiddlewareQueue();
$middleware
// Catch any exceptions in the lower layers,
// and make an error page/response
->add(new ErrorHandlerMiddleware())
// Handle plugin/theme assets like CakePHP normally does.
->add(new AssetMiddleware())
// Apply routing
->add(new RoutingMiddleware());
// Apply CORS as the first middleware
$middleware->prepend(new CorsMiddleware());

27. Middleware setup
// Oh wow, closures
$ohWow = function ($req, $res, $next) {
$res = $res->withHeader('X-WOW', 'Oh wow!');
return $next($req, $res);
};
// Add to the middleware stack
$middleware->add($ohWow);

28. Middleware setup
class OhWowMiddleware
{
public function __invoke($req, $res, $next)
{
$res = $res->withHeader('X-WOW', 'Oh wow!');
return $next($req, $res);
}
}
// Add to the middleware stack
$middleware->add(new OhWowMiddleware());

29. Easy, one-liner pagination (Even for complex queries)
Automatic association saving
Flexible association strategies
Result streaming
Query caching
Finder callbacks
Composite key support (Including foreign keys)
Tree structures
CSRF protection
Form tampering protection
Mailer classes
Authentication
Code generation
Advanced date and time support (Thanks to the Chronos library)

30. The future

31. The future*
•3.4 – Early 2017
•PSR-7 request objects
•Conditional Middleware’s (aka Pipelines)
•3.5 – Probably middle 2017
•PSR-7 response objects
•Migrating certain bits of functionality into middleware
•3.6 – Probably end 2017
•Hard deprecate the soft deprecated functionality
•4.0 – Maybe early 2018
•Clean-up by removing all deprecated functionality
https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/wiki
* Subject to change depending on community feedback

32. Let’s get baking

33. Install CakePHP
Full virtual environment available https://
github.com/FriendsOfCake/vagrant-chef
$ composer create-project cakephp/app
$ cd app && bin/cake server
Easier than baking a cake!

34. Initial database migration
$ bin/cake migrations create Initial
$ bin/cake migrations migrate
Create an empty migration file
$ bin/cake bake migration_snapshot Initial
Create a migration based on an existing database
$ bin/cake bake migration CreateBookmarks user_id:integer title:string[50]
description:text url:text created modified
Build a migration in the console
Run migrations

35. Initial database migration
$this->table('bookmarks')
->addColumn('user_id', 'integer')
->addColumn('title', 'string', ['limit' => 50])
->addColumn('description', 'text')
->addColumn('url', 'text')
->addColumn('created', 'datetime')
->addColumn('modified', 'datetime')
->create();
$this->table('bookmarks_tags', ['id' => false, 'primary_key' =>
['bookmark_id', 'tag_id']])
->addColumn('bookmark_id', 'integer')
…

36. Skipping the hard work
$ bin/cake bake all users
$ bin/cake bake all bookmarks
$ bin/cake bake all tags
$ bin/cake bake all --everything

37. Fixing broken stuff
•Interactive stack trace
•Method argument inspection
•Possible solution hints

38. DebugKit
•CakePHP 3 comes with a debug
toolbar pre-installed
•Facilitates in-depth application
inspection

39. Putting the rapid into RAD
•How do we prevent repetitive controller code?
•How do we have both a web and REST interface?
•How do we do this without creating messy spaghetti code?
The CRUD plugin
•Dynamic, event-driven and production ready scaffolding
•Automatic REST API generation
•Single responsibility action classes

40. Installing CRUD
•Remove all code from your controllers
•Go on holiday, your work is done
class AppController extends Controller
{
use CrudControllerControllerTrait;
public function initialize()
{
$this->loadComponent('Crud.Crud', [
'actions' => [
'Crud.Index',
'Crud.Add',
'Crud.Edit',
'Crud.View',
'Crud.Delete'
]
]);
}
}
$ composer require friendsofcake/crud

41. Creating a REST API
•Converts all actions into a web service capable of responding in JSON or XML
•Takes care of all error handling and validation errors
•Automatically adds a “layout” to your responses
// config/routes.php
$routes->extensions(['json', 'xml']);
public function initialize()
{
...
$this->loadComponent('RequestHandler');
$this->Crud->addListener('Crud.Api');
$this->Crud->addListener('Crud.ApiPagination');
$this->Crud->addListener('Crud.ApiQueryLog');
}
$ curl –X GET localhost:8765/tags.json

42. Extending Crud with events
Limiting records by user
Remembering the bookmark creator
$this->Crud->on('beforePaginate', function (CakeEventEvent $event) {
$event->subject()->query->where(['Bookmarks.user_id' => $this->Auth->user('id')]);
});
$this->Crud->on('beforeSave', function (CakeEventEvent $event) {
$event->subject()->entity->user_id = $this->Auth->user('id');
});

43. Other awesome plugins
•TinyAuth – Light weight role based authentication
•Friends of Cake Search – Simple interface for creating paginate-able filters
•FractalTransformerView – Use Fractal to render API responses
•TwigView – Use Twig for your templates
•Liquid – Use Liquid for your templates
•CakePDF – Easily create PDF files
•The Queue plugin – Dependency-free worker queues
Many many more available from https://github.com/friendsofcake/awesome-cakephp
Also keep an eye on the @cakephp twitter feed for weekly featured plugins!

44. Thank You.
github.com/dakota
@dakotairene
waltherlalk.com