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Flash

class Cake\View\Helper\FlashHelper(View $view, array $config = [])

FlashHelper provides a way to render flash messages that were set in $_SESSION by FlashComponent. FlashComponent and FlashHelper primarily use elements to render flash messages. Flash elements are found under the src/Template/Element/Flash directory. You’ll notice that CakePHP’s App template comes with three flash elements: success.ctp, default.ctp, and error.ctp.

Rendering Flash Messages

To render a flash message, you can simply use FlashHelper’s render() method in your template file:

<?= $this->Flash->render() ?>

By default, CakePHP uses a “flash” key for flash messages in a session. But, if you’ve specified a key when setting the flash message in FlashComponent, you can specify which flash key to render:

<?= $this->Flash->render('other') ?>

You can also override any of the options that were set in FlashComponent:

// In your Controller
$this->Flash->set('The user has been saved.', [
    'element' => 'success'
]);

// In your template file: Will use great_success.ctp instead of succcess.ctp
<?= $this->Flash->render('flash', [
    'element' => 'great_success'
]);

Note

When building custom flash message templates, be sure to properly HTML encode any user data. CakePHP won’t escape flash message parameters for you.

New in version 3.1: The FlashComponent now stacks messages. If you set multiple flash messages, when you call render(), each message will be rendered in its own elements, in the order they were set.

For more information about the available array options, please refer to the FlashComponent section.

Routing Prefix and Flash Messages

New in version 3.0.1.

If you have a Routing prefix configured, you can now have your Flash elements stored in src/Template/{Prefix}/Element/Flash. This way, you can have specific messages layouts for each part of your application. For instance, using different layouts for your front-end and admin section.

Flash Messages and Themes

The FlashHelper uses normal elements to render the messages and will therefore obey any theme you might have specified. So when your theme has a src/Template/Element/Flash/error.ctp file it will be used, just as with any Elements and Views.