Now that we have our data flowing to our model, and our application logic and flow defined by our controller, let's create a view for the index action we created above.
Cake views are just presentation-flavored fragments that fit inside an application's layout. For most applications they're HTML mixed with PHP, but they may end up as XML, CSV, or even binary data.
Layouts are presentation code that is wrapped around a view, and can be defined and switched between, but for now, let's just use the default.
Remember in the last section how we assigned the 'posts' variable to the view using the set() method? That would hand down data to the view that would look something like this:
// print_r($posts) output:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[Post] => Array
(
[id] => 1
[title] => The title
[body] => This is the post body.
[created] => 2008-02-13 18:34:55
[modified] =>
)
)
[1] => Array
(
[Post] => Array
(
[id] => 2
[title] => A title once again
[body] => And the post body follows.
[created] => 2008-02-13 18:34:56
[modified] =>
)
)
[2] => Array
(
[Post] => Array
(
[id] => 3
[title] => Title strikes back
[body] => This is really exciting! Not.
[created] => 2008-02-13 18:34:57
[modified] =>
)
)
)
Cake's view files are stored in /app/views inside a folder named after the controller they correspond to (we'll have to create a folder named 'posts' in this case). To format this post data in a nice table, our view code might look something like this:
Blog posts
| Id | Title | Created |
|---|---|---|
|
link($post['Post']['title'], array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', $post['Post']['id'])); ?> |
Blog posts
Id Title Created foreach ($posts as $post): ?>echo $post['Post']['id']; ?> echo $html->link($post['Post']['title'],array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'view', $post['Post']['id'])); ?>echo $post['Post']['created']; ?> endforeach; ?>
Hopefully this should look somewhat simple.
You might have noticed the use of an object called $html. This is an instance of the CakePHP HtmlHelper class. CakePHP comes with a set of view helpers that make things like linking, form output, JavaScript and Ajax a snap. You can learn more about how to use them in Chapter "Built-in Helpers", but what's important to note here is that the link() method will generate an HTML link with the given title (the first parameter) and URL (the second parameter).
When specifying URLs in Cake, you simply give a path relative to the base of the application, and Cake fills in the rest. As such, your URLs will typically take the form of /controller/action/param1/param2.
At this point, you should be able to point your browser to http://www.example.com/posts/index. You should see your view, correctly formatted with the title and table listing of the posts.
If you happened to have clicked on one of the links we created in this view (that link a post's title to a URL /posts/view/some_id), you were probably informed by CakePHP that the action hasn't yet been defined. If you were not so informed, either something has gone wrong, or you actually did define it already, in which case you are very sneaky. Otherwise, we'll create it in the PostsController now:
Plain Text Viewclass PostsController extends AppController {
var $name = 'Posts';
function index() {
$this->set('posts', $this->Post->find('all'));
}
function view($id = null) {
$this->Post->id = $id;
$this->set('post', $this->Post->read());
}
}
?> class PostsController extends AppController {var $name = 'Posts';function index() {$this->set('posts', $this->Post->find('all'));}function view($id = null) {$this->Post->id = $id;$this->set('post', $this->Post->read());}}?>
The set() call should look familiar. Notice we're using read() rather than find('all') because we only really want a single post's information.
Notice that our view action takes a parameter: the ID of the post we'd like to see. This parameter is handed to the action through the requested URL. If a user requests /posts/view/3, then the value '3' is passed as $id.
Now let's create the view for our new 'view' action and place it in /app/views/posts/view.ctp.
Plain Text View
Created:
echo $post['Post']['title']?>
Created: echo $post['Post']['created']?>
echo $post['Post']['body']?>
Verify that this is working by trying the links at /posts/index or manually requesting a post by accessing /posts/view/1.
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