This document is for CakePHP's development version, which can be significantly different from previous releases.
You may want to read current stable release documentation instead.

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CMS Tutorial - Creating the Database

Now that we have CakePHP installed, let’s set up the database for our CMS application. If you haven’t already done so, create an empty database for use in this tutorial, with the name of your choice such as cake_cms. If you are using MySQL/MariaDB, you can execute the following SQL to create the necessary tables:

CREATE DATABASE cake_cms;

USE cake_cms;

CREATE TABLE users (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    created DATETIME,
    modified DATETIME
);

CREATE TABLE articles (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    user_id INT NOT NULL,
    title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    slug VARCHAR(191) NOT NULL,
    body TEXT,
    published BOOLEAN DEFAULT FALSE,
    created DATETIME,
    modified DATETIME,
    UNIQUE KEY (slug),
    FOREIGN KEY user_key (user_id) REFERENCES users(id)
) CHARSET=utf8mb4;

CREATE TABLE tags (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(191),
    created DATETIME,
    modified DATETIME,
    UNIQUE KEY (title)
) CHARSET=utf8mb4;

CREATE TABLE articles_tags (
    article_id INT NOT NULL,
    tag_id INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (article_id, tag_id),
    FOREIGN KEY tag_key(tag_id) REFERENCES tags(id),
    FOREIGN KEY article_key(article_id) REFERENCES articles(id)
);

INSERT INTO users (email, password, created, modified)
VALUES
('[email protected]', 'secret', NOW(), NOW());

INSERT INTO articles (user_id, title, slug, body, published, created, modified)
VALUES
(1, 'First Post', 'first-post', 'This is the first post.', 1, NOW(), NOW());

If you are using PostgreSQL, connect to the cake_cms database and execute the following SQL instead:

CREATE TABLE users (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    created TIMESTAMP,
    modified TIMESTAMP
);

CREATE TABLE articles (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    user_id INT NOT NULL,
    title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    slug VARCHAR(191) NOT NULL,
    body TEXT,
    published BOOLEAN DEFAULT FALSE,
    created TIMESTAMP,
    modified TIMESTAMP,
    UNIQUE (slug),
    FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id)
);

CREATE TABLE tags (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(191),
    created TIMESTAMP,
    modified TIMESTAMP,
    UNIQUE (title)
);

CREATE TABLE articles_tags (
    article_id INT NOT NULL,
    tag_id INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (article_id, tag_id),
    FOREIGN KEY (tag_id) REFERENCES tags(id),
    FOREIGN KEY (article_id) REFERENCES articles(id)
);

INSERT INTO users (email, password, created, modified)
VALUES
('[email protected]', 'secret', NOW(), NOW());

INSERT INTO articles (user_id, title, slug, body, published, created, modified)
VALUES
(1, 'First Post', 'first-post', 'This is the first post.', TRUE, NOW(), NOW());

You may have noticed that the articles_tags table uses a composite primary key. CakePHP supports composite primary keys almost everywhere, allowing you to have simpler schemas that don’t require additional id columns.

The table and column names we used were not arbitrary. By using CakePHP’s naming conventions, we can leverage CakePHP more effectively and avoid needing to configure the framework. While CakePHP is flexible enough to accommodate almost any database schema, adhering to the conventions will save you time as you can leverage the convention-based defaults CakePHP provides.

Database Configuration

Next, let’s tell CakePHP where our database is and how to connect to it. Replace the values in the Datasources.default array in your config/app_local.php file with those that apply to your setup. A sample completed configuration array might look something like the following:

<?php
// config/app_local.php
return [
    // More configuration above.
    'Datasources' => [
        'default' => [
            'host' => 'localhost',
            'username' => 'cakephp',
            'password' => 'AngelF00dC4k3~',
            'database' => 'cake_cms',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL', null),
        ],
    ],
    // More configuration below.
];

Once you’ve saved your config/app_local.php file, you should see that the ‘CakePHP is able to connect to the database’ section has a green chef hat.

Note

The file config/app_local.php is a local override of the file config/app.php used to configure your development environment quickly.

Migrations

The SQL statements to create the tables for this tutorial can also be generated using the Migrations Plugin. Migrations provide a platform-independent way to run queries so the subtle differences between MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc. don’t become obstacles.

bin/cake bake migration CreateUsers email:string password:string created modified
bin/cake bake migration CreateArticles user_id:integer title:string slug:string[191]:unique body:text published:boolean created modified
bin/cake bake migration CreateTags title:string[191]:unique created modified
bin/cake bake migration CreateArticlesTags article_id:integer:primary tag_id:integer:primary created modified

Note

Some adjustments to the generated code might be necessary. For example, the composite primary key on articles_tags will be set to auto-increment both columns:

$table->addColumn('article_id', 'integer', [
    'autoIncrement' => true,
    'default' => null,
    'limit' => 11,
    'null' => false,
]);
$table->addColumn('tag_id', 'integer', [
    'autoIncrement' => true,
    'default' => null,
    'limit' => 11,
    'null' => false,
]);

Remove those lines to prevent foreign key problems. Once adjustments are done:

bin/cake migrations migrate

Likewise, the starter data records can be done with seeds.

bin/cake bake seed Users
bin/cake bake seed Articles

Fill the seed data above into the new UsersSeed and ArticlesSeed classes, then:

bin/cake migrations seed

Read more about building migrations and data seeding: Migrations

With the database built, we can now build Models.