Monday 28 October 2013

How Cakephp is Better than Other Plateforms for Web development?


Image courtsey: squaremelons.com

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. 


Wednesday 23 October 2013

Beginners Guide: Step by step Cakephp Installation Procedure on Xampp



Image courtesy: thebeak.edublogs.org
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.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Things You Should Ask Before Hiring a Cakephp Developer

Image Courtesy: blog.totaljobs.com

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.

Monday 14 October 2013

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.

Friday 11 October 2013

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.

Image Courtesy: http://trends.builtwith.com/