Welcome to the Cookbook

ada perubahan tertangguh untuk seksyen ini. More information about translations

Model behaviors are a way to organize some of the functionality defined in CakePHP models. They allow us to separate logic that may not be directly related to a model, but needs to be there. By providing a simple yet powerful way to extend models, behaviors allow us to attach functionality to models by defining a simple class variable. That's how behaviors allow models to get rid of all the extra weight that might not be part of the business contract they are modeling, or that is also needed in different models and can then be extrapolated.

As an example, consider a model that gives us access to a database table which stores structural information about a tree. Removing, adding, and migrating nodes in the tree is not as simple as deleting, inserting, and editing rows in the table. Many records may need to be updated as things move around. Rather than creating those tree-manipulation methods on a per model basis (for every model that needs that functionality), we could simply tell our model to use the TreeBehavior, or in more formal terms, we tell our model to behave as a Tree. This is known as attaching a behavior to a model. With just one line of code, our CakePHP model takes on a whole new set of methods that allow it to interact with the underlying structure.

CakePHP already includes behaviors for tree structures, translated content, access control list interaction, not to mention the community-contributed behaviors already available in the CakePHP Bakery (http://bakery.cakephp.org). In this section, we'll cover the basic usage pattern for adding behaviors to models, how to use CakePHP's built-in behaviors, and how to create our own.

In essence, Behaviors are Mixins with callbacks.