CakePHP File Structure
Let’s take a look at what CakePHP looks like right out of the box. You know what CakePHP looks like from a basic MVC request standpoint, but you’ll need to know how its files are organized as well.
- app
- cake
- docs
- index.php
- vendors
When you download CakePHP, you will see four main folders. The app folder will be where you work your magic: it’s where your application’s files will be placed. The cake folder is where we’ve worked our magic. Make a personal commitment not to edit files in this folder. We can’t help you if you’ve modified the core. The docs folder is for the quintessential readme, changelog, and licensing information. Finally, the vendors folder is where you’ll place third-party PHP libraries you need to use with your CakePHP applications.
The App Folder
CakePHP’s app folder is where you will do most of your application development. Let’s look a little closer at the folders inside of app.
- config
- Holds the (few) configuration files CakePHP uses. Database connection details, bootstrapping, core configuration files and more should be stored here.
- controllers
- Contains your application’s controllers and their components.
- locale
- Stores string files for internationalization.
- models
- Contains your application’s models, behaviors, and datasources.
- plugins
- Contains plugin packages.
- tmp
- This is where CakePHP stores temporary data. The actual data it stores depends on how you have CakePHP configured, but this folder is usually used to store model descriptions, logs, and sometimes session information.
- vendors
- Any third-party classes or libraries should be placed here. Doing so makes them easy to access using the App::import('vendor', 'name') function. Keen observers will note that this seems redundant, as there is also a vendors folder at the top level of our directory structure. We'll get into the differences between the two when we discuss managing multiple applications and more complex system setups.
- views
- Presentational files are placed here: elements, error pages, helpers, layouts, and view files.
- webroot
- In a production setup, this folder should serve as the document root for your application. Folders here also serve as holding places for CSS stylesheets, images, and JavaScript files.
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