Cakephp 3 process code after page response - cakephp

One of the requirements of the project I am working on is that I log the connections made to the site, due to the amount of processing being done to get as much information as possible I would like to process this after the page has been sent back to the user.
At the moment I am running my code in the afterFilter of my appController:
public function afterFilter(Event $event){
$log_request = new RequestsController;
$log_request->log_request();
}
I am attempting to run this in afterRender of my appController:
public function afterRender(Event $event, $viewFile){
$log_request = new RequestsController;
$log_request->log_request();
}
But I can not seem to get the code to execute or if it does then I do not know how to find out what the error being thrown is.
If somebody can point me towards an example of this being done or a concurrent method of doing this (it needs to be logged within a second of the request) I would appreciate it.

$log_request = new RequestsController; you don't instantiate controllers inside controllers. You want to learn the MVC design pattern first when using a MVC based framework or you'll end up with a non maintainable piece of horrible spaghetti code. I recommend you to do the blog tutorial to get a basic understanding.
If somebody can point me towards an example of this being done or a concurrent method of doing this (it needs to be logged within a second of the request) I would appreciate it.
Read this chapter: CakePHP Logging Taken from there:
Logging data in CakePHP is easy - the log() function is provided by the LogTrait, which is the common ancestor for many CakePHP classes. If the context is a CakePHP class (Controller, Component, View,...), you can log your data. You can also use Log::write() directly.
Add the log trait to the AppController, pass the request to the log() method and configure the logging to log these requests to whatever you prefer either in afterRender() or if you want to do it really late, do it in __destruct().

Related

Data logic on load using a component - cakePHP

I have a project I'm developing which includes articles that can be commented on (comments stored in separate table of course). I want to perform pre logic on a field from each comment, wherever they are loaded through-out the app. The data logic I want to performed is from a custom written component.
The logical place to me that this could be achieved globally is from the comment model, but I could be wrong.
I'm not even 100% if I can use a component from a model, but I've been trying to do this logic using the afterFind() call-back function:
function afterFind($results) {
foreach ($results as $key => $val) {
if (isset($val['Comment']['created'])) {
$results[$key]['Comment']['created'] = $this->Dateconvert->howLongAgo($val['Comment']['created']);;
}
}
return $results;
}
I have tried echoing from inside this function and it doesn't actually seem to be getting called but searching hasn't revealed any functions that do, but I believe afterFind() is best to illustrate what I'm trying to achieve.
So I am looking for a solution where I can performed the post-load logic on articles comments, whether they are being loaded from other controllers with associations to comments or in the comments controller. Basically a global one hit solution :D
cakephp indicates that components are for controllers and behaviours for models and helpers for view...
knowing that first, you may also know that you can use any part of it wherever you want because cake still php, though is not recomended... if is a library of functions you may want to put it inside the libs folders and access it from there.
how, easy use App::import('component', 'nameComponent'); component can be lib, controller, etc..
Having said that, afterFind is a good place to do after load things, remember that this function is call ONLY when a find is used, if you use, any other like query or save or update it won't be called.
hope this helps you :)

Calendar throughout CakePHP site, but CakeBook says to not use a Model in a Component

I have a small calendar widget-type thing on many pages throughout my site. The goal is for it to retrieve events from X category that fall between Y and Z dates.
My assumption (I'm new to CakePHP) was that I should create a component, and have it do the query. Something like this:
class CalendarComponent extends Object {
var $uses = array('Event');
function getEvents($category = null, $date = null, $limit = null) {
$events = $this->Event->find('list', //conditions to get correct events
return $events;
}
}
BUT, according to this CakeBook page:
To access/use a model in a component
is not generally recommended
So - where would I store this logic / model call if not in a component? I've admittedly not used a component yet (or not created one anyway) due to lack of really understanding how I should use them - any snippet of advice on this is also VERY welcome.
Great question in my opinion and I imagine one that comes up quite often. I was actually dealing with a similar problem where I wanted some site-wide data gathering or functionality shoved into a component.
The first thing to keep in mind:
The book is a guideline.
These 'rules' aren't rules. If there's a good reason for breaking the rule and you understand why the rule is being broken then break the damn thing! Cake itself breaks this rule quite often.
Core components that require/use models:
Acl
Auth
Sessions (fairly positive you can save session data to a model)
So, clearly there are use cases where you need to use a model inside a component. How do you do it though?
Well, there's a couple different ways. What I wound up going with? Something like this:
<?php
ModelLoadingComponent extends Object {
public function startup($controller) {
$controller->loadModel('Model');
$this->Model = $controller->Model;
}
}
?>
That's it! Your component is now setup to use $this->Model...just like you would in a controller.
Edit:
Sorry, to clarify: no, you don't have to setup a new component to load models. I was showing an example for how you could load a component in any model. The startup function I used is a component-specific callback, there's a whole slew of them http://book.cakephp.org/view/998/MVC-Class-Access-Within-Components. These callback methods make components a lot easier to work with. I highly recommend looking at this part of the components tutorial if nothing else.
If you were working inside an AppController object you could call $this->loadModel() but we aren't working an AppController! We're working with a component, really an Object. There is no Object::loadModel() so we have to come up with a different way to get that model. This is where $controller comes into play in our startup callback.
When the startup method is invoked by Cake it will pass the $controller object it's working with on this dispatch as the first parameter. With this we're able to access controller methods...like loadModel().
Why do we do it this way?
Well, we could use ClassRegistry::init('Model') in each of our component methods that need to use the model. If you have 10 methods in your component and only 1 of them uses the model this might work. However, what if you have 10 methods in your component and all 10 of them use the model? Well, you'd be calling ClassRegistry::init('Model') 10 times! That's a lot of overhead when what you really want is just 1 model object. With this method the component is creating one model object. The one we create in startup.
I hope this clarifies your questions and provides some insight into why I use this method for models in components.
Edit: Added a code clarification after I did some experimenting.
I think writing a component is overkill in this case and it would be cleaner to put the getEvents method into the Event model.

Help with cake controllers

We had an outsourced engineer work on a quick feature DELETING items listed in our database. He says that the code is difficult because the "controller" is missing. Is there a pre-loaded controller for every function like that in cake, or is it weird that he is expecting a controller to be there for a feature we didn't have yet.
There is a generic AppController, but that's more of an abstract class in practice (you generally derive your other controllers from that).
It's not that weird at all that he's expecting a controller -- after all, you won't be able to call methods in the models (which is how I'm guessing you're doing delete) unless you have a point of control to call them from. In this case, the point of control is the controller.
So you can just create a controller. Here's a template to start from:
class SomeController extends AppController {
function delete() {
$this->Some->delete();
}
}
Then access /somes/delete (remember, URLs are generally /controller/action).
Now, he could be talking about the Cake Bake CLI app. That will take your DB tables, and walk you through an initial basic setup for your app. Generally it creates a basic skeleton for CRUD actions.
Either way, you need to create a controller (manually, or via Bake).
When you use the Cake bake function, it'll create all the controllers for you. When you don't use it, you'll need to create them manually. It makes no sense to make all the controllers at the begin, just make them when you really gonna write them would be good.
If you do not have a controller in CakePHP when you visit a page (http://www.youraddress.com/Newfeature) you receive a missing controller error:
Error: NewfeatureController could not be found.
Error: Create the class NewfeatureController below in file: app\controllers\newfeature_controller.php
You cannot get or delete data from the database without controllers - Understanding Model-View-Controller. You do not need the controller only for static pages in CakePHP.

Problem in sharing Cache between main domain and subdomain

As I have posted before also,I am developing a site in two languages done in CakePHP.
Now the latest problem I am facing in my application is that the application is not sharing the Cache values between the Main Domain and the Subdomain.Please help me out of this mess...!!!
Thanks in advance.
There are 3 problems connected to this.
Data you're caching manually by using Cache::read() and Cache::write()
Just use a prefix for each subdomain when using the methods.
Element caching
you can solve this "almost" elegantly by following these steps:
Create my_view.php (or whatever) in app/views
Content:
class MyView extends View {
}
Search for view.php in the Cake Core and copy the element() method to your newly created class. Add your subdomain prefix in the part where the caching happens
In your AppController::beforeFilter() write
$this->view = 'MyView';
Now you have control over the CakePHP view layer. You have just overridden the element method.
Alternatively to this approach (if your codebase isn't already using elements extensively) you could just create a helper with a method, that takes the same arguments as the View::element() method, add the subdomain key to the cache options and call the orginal element() method.
Full Page Caching
This is a tricky one. The full page caching happens in the dispatch() method before you have any possibility to modify the behavior. The second problem is, that CakePHP uses the relative URL of the page to cache it. The relative URLs are most likely identical under your different subdomains.
I think the simplest approach here is to create a Dispatcher class, which extends the original dispatcher. Override the cached() method and implement your desired behavior, like the prefixes. Then in your app/webroot/index.php you need to change this line
$Dispatcher = new Dispatcher();
...to your new class name.

Is using the RequestHandlerComponent in a model possible?

I'm new to PHP and decided to use the cakePHP framework to help me get started.
I can't figure out one thing though, I want to call methods on the RequestHandlerComponent class to update a users last used IP address and other information, I figured the best place to put this would be in the beforeSave() method on the User model.
I can't figure out how to call the getClientIP method though.
The normal code that would otherwise go in the controller doesn't work. Is there another way to call this class if you're in the model and not the controller?
Class Level:
var $components = array('RequestHandler');
And in the function:
$this->data['User']['lastActiveIP'] = $this->RequestHandler->getClientIP();
Gives:
Undefined property: User::$RequestHandler
Call to a member function getClientIP() on a non-object
Components, by design, aren't available to models (without bypassing MVC convention - which you can do, of course). If you chose to force it to be available, look into ClassRegistry::init(). A better solution, I think, would be to employ the RequestHandler component in your controller (where it's meant to be used), set the lastActiveIp value in the controller (exactly as you've shown in your own example code) and pass the entire data array along to the model.
Now your component is being used where it should be and the model gets to remain ignorant about where it gets its data. At the risk of oversimplification, all the model should know is what to do with the data once it arrives; let the controller worry about collecting and packaging the data.
In addition to Rob's answer, maybe it's enough to put a bit of code together yourself that uses the general env('REMOTE_ADDR') or similar variables. Look at the RequestHandler code, it's not doing anything terrifically complicated.
You may even be able to call the component statically, which is slightly better than instantiating it in the model (still in violation of MVC though). Untested, but should work:
App::import('Component', 'RequestHandler');
RequestHandlerComponent::getClientIp();

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