Breaking news: CakePHP 1.2 has been released!

What did the guys from CakePHP 1.2 do during these Christmas days? Well, they have been working hard to make CakePHP 1.2 final. It's finished, read the announcement at http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/the-gift-of-1-2-final.

Thanks guys, for getting this thing done, I guess a new era for PHP frameworks has started at the end of the year.

Thanks roryy for notifying us about the release.

Most of you will already be downloading or testing 1.2, for everyone else (interested in soccer), watch this.

Best wishes to everyone the upcoming 2009!

CakePHP 1.2 release candidate 4

Hey, did you already notice that CakePHP 1.2 RC4 was released?

Automatic inclusion of Javascript in CakePHP

Earlier, I wrote about $scripts_for_layout and I was looking for a solution to automatically load js files into your layout. Well, I think the solution might be in this presentation from Felix Geisendorfer. At slide 20 he starts talking about this.

Has anyone seen this, or did you already try it?

Let us know!

Preview: ModelBaker (OSX) - Rapid Application Development for CakePHP

A few weeks ago, I was notified about ModelBaker by WidgetPress. The homepage made me quite curious, as they promise to be able to rapidly develop CakePHP applications from an OSX desktop application. Take a look at the screenshots and screencasts on their website. Or, take a look below, this is the part of the application where you describe your database.

As you can see, you enter the tables you want to use, the attributes validation and even relationships. ModelBaker gives you an overview about your tables and their relationship. Based on your information, the Models, Controllers and Views are automatically created. You can even add another model, User to use out-of-the-box authentication in your application.

You can add more helpers or components to be used in your application or even choose a template to give your application some nice looks. And hey, why not develop your application for the iPhone? - How should I do that? That would be taking hours or even days! - Not anymore, just enable 'Include iPhone & iPod Touch version of web application' and you're ready to go.

[caption id="attachment_83" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="screencast modelbaker"][/caption]

ModelBaker is still in development, 1.0 should be released within a few weeks. WidgetPress will be at MacWorld next month. I am looking forward to the first release, I guess this product will enable beginners to develop some basic wep applications en give professional users the ability to develop prototypes very rapidly.

PHP frameworks

Today I visited PHP frameworks and noticed a few PHP frameworks I didn't know yet. I know the mainstream frameworks are CakePHP, Zend, Symfony and CodeIgniter, but I saw some new ones I haven't heard of before, like Zoop, Prado, Yii and Akelos. Also, I read about Kohana.

I tried to get an overview of each framework, also the ones I already tried or heard about. The problem with this is that I am confused. I have used CakePHP for quite some projects and most of the time, it's great. But, I got the feeling there are some things returning in each or some projects for which CakePHP hasn't got the perfect solution.

CakePHP and most of the other frameworks are great for doing some database connection and helping you starting a blog in 15 or 20 minutes, but what's next? Does one of these frameworks have a killer feature?

I downloaded some of these frameworks and did a little testing. Little, not much, so everything I write down here is not based on some scientific report, but its just MHO.

There are a few frameworks I would like to test some more. Like Yii, Akelos, CodeIgniter and Kohana. Yii sounds great. Akelos seems to have a killer feature for me, the admin plugin. This enables me to create a database with my own tables (like CakePHP) but, extend this in a few minutes with a complete user/roles system including a great frontend. Akelos is definitely worth a few of your minutes.

[caption id="attachment_73" align="center" width="300" caption="Screenshot of Akelos admin plugin"][/caption]

This is it for now, maybe I'll be back with some more information on these frameworks, in case you have any experience you want to share the world, let us know!

Website usability testing

While looking into some Twitter accounts this morning, I came across a link to Silverback which was posted by quinns. It claims to be an application for Guerilla (or Gorrilla?) usability testing. The application can be used to test software or websites.

Check it out: DebugKit for CakePHP

I just found in my RSS feeds. It describes a very handy CakePHP plugin. DebugKit shows a toolbar in your application with information about the session, sql, load time and more.

Exclude content from caching

I never took an in-depth view on caching in CakePHP, but I'm working on an application in which I could use some extra speed.

Just found a way to exclude some content from caching in CakePHP.

SEO your CakePHP application

I am Search Engine Optimizing an older CakePHP application. When I started, I was looking for a solution in .htaccess, but that's not the right way.

Build your own search engine in PHP

Do you know how to build your own search engine in PHP? It is not that hard, because there are already some ready-to-use pieces, like Lucene. You just have to think how you want your search engine to work exactly and build the pieces together.



Of course, you can't do in 15 minutes what others took years, but I want to give you just a few hints of how to create your own search functionality. You could use this to index the web, and if you do, let me know so I can stop using Google.

But of course, this stuff can also be used to create your own vertical or horizontal search engine. The magic word is Lucene.

Hey, I'm following livestream of The Next Web, for which day 2 will start at 10:30. So, read on and try writing some cool things, or watch the stream for some inspiration (many startups with short presentations) and get back later to convert your idea to reality.

jQuery example overview

I just found a page from Mathias Bank with 50 jQuery examples. Might be interesting for anyone who is interested in using jQuery in CakePHP. Definitely worth a few of your minutes... or maybe more :)

HOWTO Use Zend Framework in CakePHP

This article will describe shortly how you can extend the power of CakePHP using the Zend Framework. I know, earlier this week I talked about war when writing about these two. But, reactions from Wil and Richard changed my mind a little bit. Richard mentioned about the possibility to use Zend Components within CakePHP. I tested this for myself and it took me only a few minutes.

Zend framework 1.5 released, good?

Zend has released version 1.5 of their framework. I must admit I never really tried it, but the release of the new version made me curious about it. My goal is to develop high quality web applications and I want to use DRYA (don't repeat yourself or another - just thought about that, why would anyone reinvent the weel). I just took a look at their press release and noticed that for at least one person his wildest dreams are coming true...

CakePHP RSS component and SMS component@the Bakery

A few days ago two interesting articles were posted at the Bakery. One is about an SMS component and another about an RSS component for use in CakePHP.

CakePHP 1.2 or 1.1, which version do you use?

I was wondering which version of CakePHP is mainstream right now. For about two or three months I started using CakePHP version 1.2 for all of my projects, and I know it is still in beta. I wouldn't use closed source software beta versions for projects like this, but the feeling that I can view and modify the code if necessary gives me enough trust bin 1.2. Of course, also the new options help in this decision.

CakePHP FAQ and Best Practices

So, a few months ago I added to pages to this website. One for a CakePHP FAQ and another to write something about CakePHP Best Practices, or what works best for me. I would like to have other people leave their answers or ideas too, so I am looking for an option to have those pages edited by everyone, like a Wiki.

CakePHP vs Zend Framework comparison

Chad wrote an interesting comparison between CakePHP and the Zend Framework. He has made an overview of the main differences between the both frameworks for now. My first look at his comparison was a little more points for the Zend Framework, but in his conclusion... Hmmm, I'm not gonna spoil this...

How to use $scripts_for_layout

Finally discovered how $scripts_for_layout works.

I have put

< ?php echo $javascript->link('jtip', false); ?>

in my view. False just means do not put it here, but put it where $scripts_for_layout is in my layout, so in the header.

Still looking for a way to have js scripts automatically included. It exists, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for... Anyone?

Nice Slideshare presentation about CakePHP

Can't get it shown here. But gwoo has a nice presentation about CakePHP 1.2. He gives you an overview of CakePHP and especially 1.2. Have a look at it, it's definitely worth your minutes and it will not hurt you.

New theme

Hi, I just changed to a new theme... I needed something fresh here. Soon I will add new posts here about CakePHP 1.2. I also included some new plugins (thanks to Joost de Valk). Thanks for the theme goes to http://www.nodethirtythree.com/.

Ajax is so easy...

Ok, download CakePHP 1.2 and create a basic website with some scaffolding or something. Include Prototype or jQuery and think about a part of your page you want to replace with the result of an Ajax request.

Suppose you have a scaffolded list of customers. When you press the View link, Cake redirects you to customers/view/123. You can catch the link and call some Javascript to load the result of customers/view/123 in a div on your index page. Quite easy, but you now see your header twice. Not cool. Hmmm....

Adding a filter to scaffolded tables

I just wrote a start for a filter which I can easily add above scaffolded tables. Scaffolding is great, but I want a form above to limit the number on results based on my parameters. It is not finished, but I just post what I have, any tips, let me know.

jQuery worth trying

This is a very short post, but I wanted to tell you about jQuery. I tried it earlier this week in a new CakePHP 1.2 project. Just included jquery.js in my layout and used the code below to have a toggle effect. With Mootools I always needed much more code to achieve this effect.

Try this example.

Let me know what you think of this!

Nice article on using scriptacolous

Jan Boonen wrote a nice article on using Scriptacolous effects in CakePHP 1.2:

CakePHP's AJAX helper offers you direct access to the Sciptaculous library. If you have little AJAX experience, the usage of this helper might seem overwhelming. It is not, the largest part of the job is creating good views.

Check it out!

Pushing your app to production

Sean posted a comment here about an article he wrote about pushing a CakePHP application to production. He makes a few modifications to have CakePHP determine its location automatically and uses a script and ncftp to upload the latest trunk from subversion to the production environment.

Check out the script and his article on his weblog.

Thanks, Sean!

Happy new year!

Best wishes for 2008 for everyone! The guys at CakePHP started with new production and development versions, so check out the site.

Happy developing!