Five Things that Every Beginner Should Know About CakePHP Framework

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CakePHP framework is a quick build solution to PHP website development. As it follows MVC (Model View Controller) architecture, it has ability to divide development work in separate entities and hence supports the code re-usability feature. There are plenty of features that places CakePHP framework in a unique category, but in my research I find these five points that every beginner should know about CakePHP platform:

Easy to Create Admin Section

In CakePHP framework, you can easily create admin section that holds all rights in one entity by just uncomment “define(‘CAKE_ADMIN’,’admin’);” in config/core.php file.
That helps to access all processes prefixed with “admin_”, like “admin/controller/action”. You can also prevent unwanted user access through password protect your admin section.
 

Static Pages
It is easy to create and access static pages in CakePHP. Suppose you want to create a static page then just create a view inside the “views/page/folder”.  You can also access it through ‘/page’.
Also if you want to adjust the page title of static page using pages controller, add the given command “<? $this->pagetitle = ‘Page Title’; ?>” to view section.
 

Bake.php to Generate MVC
Bake is a command line php script that automatically produces a MVC on the basis of database design. It helps to save several times in repetitive tasks like making CRUD controller operation and views.
For using bake, you first crate a table in your database then convert’s directories to the “/cake/scripts/ folder” and run “php bake.php”.

Easy Email Sending Through PHP-Mailer
You can send mail either through JavaScript or PHP-mailer function. Which one is easy? The answer should be PHP-mailer because sending emails through PHP-mailer is very secure and it construct mail header by itself.
 

Many Options of Documentation
CakePHP has many documentation resources to learn and find solutions easily. Apart from manual, API and Wiki are two best sources of information. In these wiki tutorials and API, you can easily find all essential points to build a website in CakePHP.

Read CakePHP Features for Website Application Development

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CakePHP is an open source framework that allows developers to write codes in less time and effort from other frameworks. Many developers move to CakePHP platform to build websites in a new and progressive manner. CakePHP allows a basic system to the developers to construct, establish and manage a collection of web applications.

Support PHP Versions
Now days, CakePHP totally supports most recent versions of PHP programming language. It can be used to build the future web applications and also capable in integration of particular functionality to fulfill the requirements of client. The advanced features of Cakephp also help to improve user experience for the web applications.

MVC architecture
The architecture consists of three elements, i.e., model, view and controller. Model is used to communicate with various data sources, and View is used to handle the website layout and design. However, the Controller will permit you to operate the working of model and view based on the directions received from clients. Each layer can be used separately to make the web development process easier and smoother.

Security

The strong security features of CakePHP stands it higher than other frameworks. It contains Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework that helps to configure SQL queries easily. However, you can also use database commands like Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete for user security in less time and effort. The in-built shell of Cakephp framework permits to integrate CLI (Command line interface) too.

Templates
CakePHP is well-known framework among web developers because of its variety of fast and flexible templates. Here you can also design custom CakePHP templates to modify the visuals of the user interface of your website application. There are several CakePHP professionals in the world that can provide a number of customized templates to earn money. 

Other Features

It doesn’t end up here. CakePHP offers some more functionality to make website application development more eminent and easier. Along with support all database functions; it supports the functionality of code re-usability. So developers can comfortably setup the system without writing extended codes. The framework provides other features like rich query APIs and shorten URL syntax.

5 Do’s of CakePHP Web Development That A Developer Usually Bypasses

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Most developers are confident of being 100% familiarized with each part of CakePHP Website Development. Actually, developers are well known with the development process. But, many of them actually don’t aware from what they should need to do during project development process. This post explains five such things which every developer should remember at the time of development:

Web standards
Web standards are made to provide the quality, movability, availability and usability to your application. When we ignore these standards, it impacts the application process adversely. Your applications must be in compliance with these web standards or should be W3C validated. Therefore, follow the standards for all web programs so that you don't repent in future advantages.

URL Optimization
Search engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial factor of the online accessibility of each website and URLs play a vital role in building a site SEO-friendly. While working, developers normally forget to optimize the URLs structure that suits for search engines. So, don’t leave the site URLs without optimization. Always optimize the URL structures of your CakePHP website by including all necessary keywords.

Organize Content
Website content is a significant part as it attracts several customers and it should be organized orderly on a site. So, don’t ignore the elements like titles, sub-titles, paragraphs, keywords and bullets to include as it impacts website traffic flow.  Also check the grammatical mistakes twice to make your content error prone. Assure that your placement of content should be at right place where it best suits and describes application functionality.

Application Testing
Don't leave your site before testing your application. It is important for CakePHP developers to understand that testing application is a part of their work regime. If they don’t test application, it may be possible that workflow of an app will corrupt, which impact adversely on your site performance. Therefore, test all necessary parameters including performance, quality, bug-issues, and security of application. Other solution is to hand over the task to a quality-assurance team in your company.

Test Coding
It is important to test the code once written as it helps to miss the last minute hassle. Most developers don't check codes before leaving the website. It puts them sometimes in trouble at important occasions. So, it is recommended to grasp the importance of checking and re-checking their code.

Learn Cakephp from Tutorials

Cakephp is a fast growing framework that makes website development faster and easier for php programmers. Its MVC platform is a great help to developers. It’s already in-built view structure and functional library is making PHP popular among other programming languages.

For beginners, it is really a tedious task to find right assistance for learning Cakephp from the basics. So, here I collect some very good tutorials and sources to learn and understand Cakephp framework thoroughly.

Online Books and PDFs

The very first tutorial for every beginner should start with is the e-book suggested by cakephp.org itself. It is one of the best books to start learning basics of Cakephp. 

Gobookee is another good place to find several e-books (free or paid both) in Cakephp category. One best thing is that if you have any good tutorial to share then you can also submit it here.   

Video Tutorials
Video is the best tutorial to learn and apply Cakephp phenomenon itself. Official Cakephp channel is very popular among beginners as well as experts. Here all topics related to Cakephp development, issues and solutions discussed by qualified experts.

Andrew Spark is another known name that is very experienced and knowledgeable tutor. He explained Cakephp fundamentals and applications in his video series in a very simple and understandable manner.  

Cakephp Blogs

James Fairhurst explained all the Cakephp methods from installation to code snippets in his articles and tutorials. His famous series of tutorials is “Full cake 1.2 App (Part 1 to 12)”.

I highly recommend “Nuts and Bolts of Cakephp” blog to read and learn tips and tricks of Cakephp to practice at home. Also you can find new updates and code snippets for several issues like session storage, firebug logging etc.

Cakephp Cheat sheet

I always prefer to carry a cheatsheet to remind code snippets for particular function quickly. It saves time, makes process faster and people can find a lot of code snippets for Cakephp platform at one place. So, here is one of the best online cheat sheets to learn and use several coding actions and data definitions.

http://cakephp.org/files/Resources/CakePHP-1.2-Cheatsheet.pdf

Forums and Q/A websites

If you don’t able to search and find the solution of your queries, you can ask from experts in different communities and Q&A websites. Just post your question and get your answer in no time. Forums and Q&A websites are best to even ask some silly questions which you can’t able to discuss with your friends and tutor. Simply first register an account on forum site and post a new thread with your queries. Here people are always available to help beginners and experienced too. Some popular sites are:

Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cake-php

Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com/

Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=cakephp

How Cakephp is Better than Other Plateforms for Web development?

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CakePHP can be best defined as an open source development framework for the new generation coders. Based on PHP scripting language & MVC architecture, CakePHP provides its users with extremely easy programming digest and friendly guide for development.

It is easy to create objective modules in CakePHP with its well-segregated building components. For a beginner like me it has been always easy to have the CakePHP built-in validation features – that allow you to comply with the major rules and conventions of PHP development, with dynamic trackback options. Taking care of your leads at every instance of development, Cake’s dynamic built-in support allows you to gain all the momentum needed in developing lengthy codes and controlling your tasks flawlessly.

Another noteworthy thing about the Cake framework is, it requires less coding and allows you to set-up database effortlessly. With Cake’s well-organized library, you get code assemblies to build different functionalities and object modules. Powered by easy instructions, these exclusive code events let you effortlessly command the attributes that you need in your application without having to look inside-out and wasting much of your time.

I have seen many of my friends shifting to this framework just because they wanted to have liberty of doing things excessively, at one place. 

Another important thing that makes CakePHP so desirable is its powerful scaffolding features that are highly instrumental in building prototypes rapidly. With CakePHP scaffolding features you can interactively create, retrieve, update and delete objects and define how objects are related to each other, most easily! CakePHP has been also different in the way it offers flexibility to its users. Flexible Caching and ACL (Access Control List) offers great benefits to its users by letting them interact with all those entities the way they want and retrieve the needed information most suitably. 

Read full post here: http://ezinearticles.com/?CakePHP---Less-Coding,-More-Fun---How?&id=8079067

Beginners Guide: Step by step Cakephp Installation Procedure on Xampp

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Now days, Cakephp web development is very popular for small as well as large projects, all over the world. Cakephp is popular because of its several advantages over other frameworks. Some of them are reusable code creation, MVC (Model View Controller) and strong debugging tools. Php developers found it best framework for web application development and content management.

Here i am going to teach you how to install and configure cakephp on your local xampp server. Follow the instructions below:

1. Go to cakephp.org and download the latest version of Cakephp (Latest version of cakephp is now 2.4.2 released today).

2. Copy the cakephp folder in xampp folder and unzip the file i.e. Local disk C--> xampp--> htdocs-->Cakephp folder.

3. Go to Cakephp folder -->app-->Config and rename the database.php.defult as database.php.

4. Make sure the host, login, password and database should be changed with proper values.
For example:

public $default = array(
            'datasource' => 'Database/Mysql',
            'persistent' => false,
            'host' => '192.100.1.1',
            'login' => 'saurabhsharma',
            'password' => 'saurabh999',
            'database' => 'niche_site',
            'prefix' => '',
            'encoding' => 'utf8'
        );

5. Change the values of the Security.salt and Security.cipherSeed. You can find these two strings here: Cakephp folder - ->app-->Config-->core.php
/**
 * A random string used in security hashing methods.
 */
    Configure::write('Security.salt', 'DYhG93b0qyJfIyfs2guVoUubWwvniR2G0FgaC9mi');

/**
 * A random numeric string (digits only) used to encrypt/decrypt strings.
 */
    Configure::write('Security.cipherSeed', '76859309657458942496749683645');


6. Open the browser and type: http://localhost/Cakephpfolder/ or http://127.0.0.1/Cakephpfolder/ and You're Done..!

Note:  If you find still any error please check the “Cakephp folder -->tmp” is writable and “apache mod_rewrite” is enabled.

Things You Should Ask Before Hiring a Cakephp Developer

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Somewhere I read these nice lines:

“If you need a good developer do not look for cakePHP developer. Look for a good developer who knows cakePHP.”

What I learn from above saying that if you want to hire good cakephp developer, you should balance your interview with half of the questions aren’t related to PHP functions and programming.

Please find a good checklist that helps you to hire a more appropriate developer for your company.

Start with the basics
It is good to start with some basic questions

• How HTTP works? (To check the understanding of HTTP)
• What is MVC? (Model, View, and Controller)
• Ask questions about SQL joins and data structures
• Ask some basic programming questions related to PHP (like networking, web, transformations etc.)

Code
You can ask to write code like multiply two metrics, finding no. of digits in a row, swapping string of characters etc. Also try to find the understanding of candidate with HTML/CSS and JavaScript by asking some simple HTML tags and their uses. Always remind that start from easy to hard as if he is not comfortable on simple phase, he probably will not crack the next level.  The code you are asking should be small. You can also allow the access of internet. You can also ask to read code to check the efficiency of identifying errors and bugs.

Framework
Now framework knowledge is what we are looking for. As we are talking about cakephp Framework, it’s very helpful to ready some samples of code. Ask him to explain those codes with the importance of functions and tags used in it. Some other common questions are given below:

• Why cakephp not the other frameworks?
• Ask some questions related to controller, Ajax, validations and HABTM.
• Ask about the version of cakephp he has worked on or working, differences and additional functions.
• Ask about the database connectivity and database related functions commonly in use.

Resources
What are the resource’s candidate uses? How does he update himself? This shows the hunger of candidate to learn more and more. Any resource like blogs, articles, magazines, forums and books. There are several cakephp web development resources through which a person can learn many things by himself. The most popular and helpful sources I found StackOverFlow and W3Schools.

I would appreciate your queries and suggestions here. I know there may be some more important cakephp questions which I have skipped here, so feel free to add in your comments.

Five Best Sources to Get Assistance for Cakephp Web Development

The CakePHP framework has been introduced in 2005 and it is open source. To learn cakephp, people generally go through various tutorials and blogs. In learning phase, people need assistance of experienced developers or programmers, working in cakephp web development for several years. There are five sources I found very helpful in cakephp web development:

Google Groups or Community
The Google group is a community where people regularly ask several questions, post topics and discuss their problem to get appropriate solution or conclusion. I really found it interesting and informative for cakephp web development issues. You can easily access this group by simply sign in with your Gmail account and ask your queries regarding cakephp. People here will love to answer the best of his knowledge and experience for each question you ask. You can also create a group on Google.

Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is a question and answer website for web programmers and developers. You don’t need to register or login to ask questions and give answers for any topic relevant to your interest. You can ask your cakephp related questions here. This Q&A site allows people to vote up and down for any good or bad answer. Also, people can choose an accepted answer if the concept can work for them, suggested by the developer on stack overflow.

Github
Found in 2008, Github provides a platform to share code with friends, co-workers and others. This helps to simplify the code and offers major help by more than four million people active on github. People can download github software on their laptops and mobiles to comment on the code and report issues. The best thing of github, it has millions of repositories which contain code and solutions of several programming issues for cakephp framework and other.

Cake expert
Cake experts is the best place to find cakephp developers and companies’ details expertise in cakephp web development. You can find a list of cakephp freelancers and development teams here. Also you can   list or add your company details here. The aim of this directory is to provide and organize a list of cakephp developers and organizations at one place.

Geek list
Geek list is a combination of social network and community for developers. You can share your work, links and resources relevant to your expertise and work field (i.e. cakephp website development) here. You can connect with people and hire developers from geek list. The community of geeklist is a helpful hand for programming issues, job listings and updates of new technologies. What you need is just register yourself and meet up several developers and companies CEO of your niche.

One that I missed is W3Schools.com (a good online tutorial and guide to learn cakephp programming basics). This is all what I thinks as useful resources. If you know some other good sources to learn cakephp or anything that helps people in cakephp website development, please feel free to share here.

Why cakephp is best option for website development?

Among all open PHP frameworks, CakePHP is usually the best choice in terms of a trusted as well as screened composition for computer programmers or developers in order to simplify the website development procedure. It supports MVC (Model-View-Controller) structure that isolates business logic from website design and its presentation, and this creates CakePHP platform the most liable composition for web development.

Cakephp is an open source framework that offers lots of in-built functionalities with low installation and adjustment complexity, but before jumping on cakephp, you should familiar with PHP, OOPs concepts and ability to find out framework source code. Its rigid catalogue structure and official internationalization support make cakephp, the best bet for small to large projects of website development.

If we have a look on the Web Technology Usage Trends, we can find that cakephp framework used or is in use in almost all categories. See the statics below:

The next best is, to setup cakephp framework, there is no need of any other settings to start up your work. Also, CakePHP is endorsed by a vast developer’s community. This allows CakePHP programmers to be able to get assistance from other developers. They are also able to discover alternatives for many development troubles. This can prove out that cakephp is very profitable for web development and business.

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