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3.1 Migration Guide

CakePHP 3.1 is a fully API compatible upgrade from 3.0. This page outlines the changes and improvements made in 3.1.

Routing

  • The default route class has been changed to DashedRoute in the cakephp/app repo. Your current code base is not affected by this, but it is recommended to use this route class from now on.

  • Name prefix options were added to the various route builder methods. See the Using Named Routes section for more information.

Console

  • Shell::dispatchShell() no longer outputs the welcome message from the dispatched shell.

  • The breakpoint() helper function has been added. This function provides a snippet of code that can be put into eval() to trigger an interactive console. This is very helpful when debugging in test cases, or other CLI scripts.

  • The --verbose and --quiet console options now control stdout/stderr logging output levels.

Shell Helpers Added

  • Console applications can now create helper classes that encapsulate re-usable blocks of output logic. See the Shell Helpers section for more information.

RoutesShell

  • RoutesShell has been added and now provides you a simple to use CLI interface for testing and debugging routes. See the Routes Shell section for more information.

Controller

  • The following Controller properties are now deprecated:

    • layout

    • view - replaced with template

    • theme

    • autoLayout

    • viewPath - replaced with templatePath

    • viewClass - replaced with className

    • layoutPath

    Instead of setting these properties on your controllers, you should set them on the view using methods with matching names:

    // In a controller, instead of
$this->layout = 'advanced';

// You should use
$this->viewBuilder()->layout('advanced');

These methods should be called after you’ve determined which view class will be used by a controller/action.

AuthComponent

  • New config option storage has been added. It contains the storage class name that AuthComponent uses to store user record. By default SessionStorage is used. If using a stateless authenticator you should configure AuthComponent to use MemoryStorage instead.

  • New config option checkAuthIn has been added. It contains the name of the event for which auth checks should be done. By default Controller.startup is used, but you can set it to Controller.initialize if you want authentication to be checked before you controller’s beforeFilter() method is run.

  • The options scope and contain for authenticator classes have been deprecated. Instead, use the new finder option to configure a custom finder method and modify the query used to find a user there.

  • The logic for setting Auth.redirect session variable, which is used to get the URL to be redirected to after login, has been changed. It is now set only when trying to access a protected URL without authentication. So Auth::redirectUrl() returns the protected URL after login. Under normal circumstances, when a user directly accesses the login page, Auth::redirectUrl() returns the value set for loginRedirect config.

FlashComponent

  • FlashComponent now stacks Flash messages when set with the set() or __call() method. This means that the structure in the Session for stored Flash messages has changed.

CsrfComponent

  • CSRF cookie expiry time can now be set as a strtotime() compatible value.

  • Invalid CSRF tokens will now throw a Cake\Network\Exception\InvalidCsrfTokenException instead of the Cake\Network\Exception\ForbiddenException.

RequestHandlerComponent

  • RequestHandlerComponent now switches the layout and template based on the parsed extension or Accept header in the beforeRender() callback instead of startup().

  • addInputType() and viewClassMap() are deprecated. You should use config() to modify this configuration data at runtime.

  • When inputTypeMap or viewClassMap are defined in the component settings, they will overwrite the default values. This change makes it possible to remove the default configuration.

Network

HttpClient

  • The default mime type used when sending requests has changed. Previously multipart/form-data would always be used. In 3.1, multipart/form-data is only used when file uploads are present. When there are no file uploads, application/x-www-form-urlencoded is used instead.

ORM

You can now Lazily Eager Load Associations. This feature allows you to conditionally load additional associations into a result set, entity or collection of entities.

The patchEntity() and newEntity() method now support the onlyIds option. This option allows you to restrict hasMany/belongsToMany association marshalling to only use the _ids list. This option defaults to false.

Query

  • Query::notMatching() was added.

  • Query::leftJoinWith() was added.

  • Query::innerJoinWith() was added.

  • Query::select() now supports Table and Association objects as parameters. These parameter types will select all the columns on the provided table or association instance’s target table.

  • Query::distinct() now accepts a string to distinct on a single column.

  • Table::loadInto() was added.

  • EXTRACT, DATE_ADD and DAYOFWEEK raw SQL functions have been abstracted to extract(), dateAdd() and dayOfWeek().

View

  • You can now set _serialized to true for JsonView and XmlView to serialize all view variables instead of explicitly specifying them.

  • View::$viewPath is deprecated. You should use View::templatePath() instead.

  • View::$view is deprecated. You should use View::template() instead.

  • View::TYPE_VIEW is deprecated. You should use View::TYPE_TEMPLATE instead.

Helper

SessionHelper

  • The SessionHelper has been deprecated. You can use $this->request->session() directly.

FlashHelper

  • FlashHelper can render multiple messages if multiple messages where set with the FlashComponent. Each message will be rendered in its own element. Messages will be rendered in the order they were set.

FormHelper

  • New option templateVars has been added. templateVars allows you to pass additional variables to your custom form control templates.

Email

  • Email and Transport classes have been moved under the Cake\Mailer namespace. Their former namespaces are still usable as class aliases have been set for them.

  • The default email profile is now automatically set when an Email instance is created. This behavior is similar to what is done in 2.x.

Mailer

  • The Mailer class was added. This class helps create reusable emails in an application.

I18n

Time

  • Time::fromNow() has been added. This method makes it easier to calculate differences from ‘now’.

  • Time::i18nFormat() now supports non-gregorian calendars when formatting dates.

Validation

  • Validation::geoCoordinate() was added.

  • Validation::latitude() was added.

  • Validation::longitude() was added.

  • Validation::isInteger() was added.

  • Validation::ascii() was added.

  • Validation::utf8() was added.

Testing

TestFixture

model key is now supported to retrieve the table name for importing.