debuggable

I need something like username.mywebsite.com to be implemented in cakephp.

can you please help me out.

This seems to do exactly what i need but im fairly new to CakePHP and amn't sure how to implement this with a default Cake set up.

Any chance of a few pointers?

Cheers Felix, but what im more interested in trying to do is catch when a controller is missing and check if a friendly_url exists in the database. This is why i wanted to catch elements for which the controller didnt exists and direct them at a custom pages controller.

The url would then be used within the controller to determine which page is being viewed.

Hello!
Your idea is very smart (and CakePHP is really flexible :)!

I think this could be used to localize url for search engine optimization. For example www.domain.com/about_us could be translated, depending on user language, to an other localized url (www.domain.com/chi_siamo in Italian). I will try to develop the url localization idea further. Do you think your approach could be the right one?

Great blog!

This is FANTASTIC! Below are a couple of implementation notes for others that may run into trouble. I just want to comment first that you shouldn't abandon this. This is a perfect solution for static pages when you don't want them buried a level down in your URL.

So, here's how I got it to work for me in 1.1.17.5612:

1. Put the linked-to snippet into /app/vendors/CakeUrlAlias.php

2. In your routes.php, make sure you have the following before any of the routing:
vendor('CakeUrlAlias');

CakeUrlAlias_Activate($from_url, 'pages', 'display');

3. Also in your routes.php, make sure you have the following:
$Route->connect('/pages/display/*', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display'));

$Route->connect('/pages/*', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display'));

Note that the SECOND line is already there. Make sure you insert the first line in the given order.

4. COPY your cake/libs/controller/components/pages_controller.php into app/controllers
There are two reasons for this -- CakeUrlAlias.php only recognizes controllers in this location, plus we want to make a couple of changes and you shouldn't touch the distribution code anyway.

5. Paste the __triggerMissingController function from above into your new, personal pages_controller.php file.

6. Add this code:
# if the page doesn't exist, trigger MISSING CONTROLLER rather than view not found.

if (!file_exists(VIEWS . 'pages/' . join('/', $path) . $this->ext)) {

$this->__triggerMissingController($page);

}

right before this line:

$this->render(join('/', $path));

near the bottom of the display function in your pages_controller.php.

Now, you can access the static page called test.thtml as such:
/test

/pages/test

/pages/display/test

Root works:
/

Also "subpages" (directories) work:
/mydir/test

/mydir/pages/test

/mydir/pages/display/test

Missing controllers will work properly.
The only negative affect is even if you use /pages/* URL's, page-not-found errors will be displayed as missing controller errors. No big deal, because as soon as you go live (debug to 0), you'll get the normal 404 page.

I like this approach because (a) I get my static pages at root level; (b) it doesn't break the default route for pages; and (c) is allows "proper" controller/function/parameters use of the controller.

I was having some problems with the solution presented above when using explicitly routed URLs. For example, I have the following lines in the routes.php file:

$Route->connect('/layouts/*', array('controller' => 'themes', 'action' => 'index'));

Whenever I try to access mysite/layouts, I get a Missing Controller error. So I thought of adding another parameter in the CakeUrlAlias_Activate function where I could pass the $Route->routes array. Then instead of placing these lines at the start of routes.php, I placed them last:

vendor('CakeUrlAlias');
CakeUrlAlias_Activate($from_url, 'pages', 'display', 'home', $Route->routes);

I then modified the CakeUrlAlias.php snippet's CakeUrlAlias_Activates function into something like this:

// I've added the additional parameter $routes
function CakeUrlAlias_Activate(&$url, $controller = 'pages', $action = 'display', $home = 'home', $routes = null)

{

$parts = explode('/', $url);

if (empty($parts) || empty($parts[0]))
{

$url = $controller.'/'.$action.'/'.$home;

return;

}

$pluginOrController = array_shift($parts);

// Then I've also modified the function for checking if the controller exists
if (CakeUrlAlias_ControllerExists($pluginOrController, $routes) || CakeUrlAlias_PluginExists($pluginOrController))

return;

if (!empty($parts))
$additional = '/'.join('/', $parts);

else

$additional = null;

$url = $controller.'/'.$action.'/'.$pluginOrController.$additional;
}

function CakeUrlAlias_ControllerExists($name, $routes = null)
{

$paths = Configure::getInstance();

foreach ($paths->controllerPaths as $path)
{

if(file_exists($path.$name.'_controller.php'))

{

return true;

}

}

// Check if there is an explicit declaration in the Routes configuration
foreach ($routes as $path) {

if (ereg($name, $path[0])) {

return true;

}

}

return false;
}

That's all. I hope this would prove to be a good additional information for 'ya all. Enjoy!