My First Bite of Cake

Erik Karey Jun 14th, 2007 7 Comments

In my recent post “Never Lose the Desire to Learn” Matt Huggins left me a comment asking me which PHP framework I used when creating my own websites. Personally I have never used a framework. I’ve always started coding projects from scratch and well sometimes things can get messy that way. Matt recommended that I look into CakePHP, a PHP framework designed for rapid development and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

What is CakePHP?
Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which provides the groundwork for just about any application. The benefit to using a framework is that you can create huge applications while keeping them flexible enough to maintain and grow.

Cake follows the MVC architecture which is not only powerful, but also logically separates your code. MVC stands for (model-view-controller) and as the name suggests it breaks your code into 3 separate layers:

Model – are representations of the database and perform all the functions associated with it. They connect, query, and save data when instructed to do so by the controller.
Controller – this is where all of your applications logic is held. You can have any number of controllers and each can perform a number of functions. The controller is the middleman. It can retrieve data from the model and register variables and objects that can be used in the views.
View – these can be thought of as the template files of your application. They take the content from the controller and present it to the user.

Why Are You Telling Us This?
Well I honestly don’t have a clue if any of my visitors are interested in web programming, but I’m hoping that at least a few of you are. And because of that I wanted to let you know about CakePHP. It’s an interesting framework that is certainly worth looking into.

I’m pretty sure it’s going to make my life easier in the future and speed up the development of a few projects I have going right now. I plan to play around with it over the next week and see how fast I can learn it.

If you are interested in hearing more about CakePHP or web programming in general on my blog please leave a comment so I can gauge interest.

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7 Comments

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1

Matt Huggins June 14, 2007

Nice! Let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll help the best I can. Hopefully things will be a piece of cake for you now.
2

Jay June 14, 2007

I used to do all my coding from scratch, but with the birth of my daughter two years ago I realized frameworks saved me a lot of time I could be spending with her. I haven’t tried CakePHP yet, will have to look into it.
3

Zahasman June 15, 2007

You and I are using the same blog template, started blogging at the very same month (April 07), writes about a niche which is somewhat related (internet entrepreneurship), and we’re both exploring CakePHP.. sounds a bit freaky.. but its true

Anyway, I wish the best of everything in whatever you’re venturing in and thnks for dropping by
4

Erik Karey June 15, 2007

Yes, I definitely noticed we used the same template and were blogging about similar topics, it’s weird. It’s very weird about the date we started and the CakePHP.

Good luck with your blog as well!
5

Scot Smith June 19, 2007

Have you heard of symphony?
http://21degrees.com.au/products/symphony/
6

Erik Karey June 20, 2007

I’ve heard of symphony when I started looking at frameworks, but decided on Cake when it was recommended to me. Here’s a nifty little table comparing a bunch of frameworks.

http://www.phpit.net/article/ten-different-php-frameworks/
7

nicusor July 12, 2007

This is one of the most useful posts that I read lately!

I’m one of those interested in web programming and doing from scratch :)) but I’ll give it a try! I downloaded it already!

Thank you!