Welcome to The Cookbook

In general, filenames are underscored, while classnames are CamelCased. The class KissesAndHugsController can be found in the file kisses_and_hugs_controller.php, for example.

The name of the class a file holds may not necessarily be found in the filename, however. The class EmailComponent is found in a file named email.php, and the class HtmlHelper is found in a file named html.php.

Model classnames are singular and CamelCased. Person, BigPerson, and ReallyBigPerson are all examples of conventional model names.

Table names corresponding to CakePHP models are plural and underscored. The underlying tables for the above mentioned models would be people, big_people, and really_big_people, respectively.

Foreign keys in hasMany, belongsTo or hasOne relationships are recognized by default as the (singular) name of the related model followed by _id. So if a baker hasMany cakes, the cakes table will refer to the baker in the bakers table via a baker_id foreign key.

Join tables, used in hasAndBelongsToMany (HABTM) relationships between models should be named after the model tables they will join in alphabetical order (apples_zebras rather than zebras_apples).

All tables CakePHP models interact with (with the exception of join tables), require a singular primary key to uniquely identify each row. If you wish to model a table which does not have a single-field primary key, such as the rows of your posts_tags join table, CakePHP's convention is that a single-field primary key is added to the table.

Controller classnames are plural, CamelCased, and end in ‘Controller.’ PeopleController, BigPeopleController, and ReallyBigPeopleController are all examples of conventional controller names.

The first function you write for a controller might be the index() function. When a request specifies a controller but not an action, the default CakePHP behavior is to render the index() function of that controller. For example, a request to http://www.example.com/apples/ maps to a call on the index() function of the ApplesController, where as http://www.example.com/apples/view maps to a call on the view() function of the ApplesController.

You can also change the visibility of controller functions in CakePHP by prepending controller function names with underscores. If a controller function has been prepended with an underscore, the function will not be web-viewable through the dispatcher, but is available for internal use.

View template files are named after the controller functions they display, in an underscored form. The getReady() function of the PeopleController class will look for a view template in /app/views/people/get_ready.ctp.

The basic pattern is /app/views/controller/underscored_function_name.ctp.

By naming the pieces of your application using CakePHP conventions, you gain functionality without the hassle and maintenance tethers of configuration. Here’s a final example that ties the conventions

• Database table: ‘people’
• Model class: ‘Person’, found at /app/models/person.php
• Controller class: ‘PeopleController’, found at /app/controllers/people_controller.php
• View template, found at /app/views/people/index.ctp

Using these conventions, CakePHP knows that a request to http://example.com/people/ maps to a call on the index() function of the PeopleController, where the Person model is automatically available (and automatically tied to the ‘people’ table in the database), and renders to a file. None of these relationships have been configured by any means other than by creating classes and files that you’d need to create anyway.

Now that you’ve been introduced to CakePHP’s fundamentals, you might try a run through the CakePHP Blog Tutorial, an appendix at the end of this manual.