CakeDC Blog

TIPS, INSIGHTS AND THE LATEST FROM THE EXPERTS BEHIND CAKEPHP

RSS Feeds, Fast and Easy

Written by Daniel on December 25, 2008
50917 VIEWS

For my first entry, I am going to talk about how to create an RSS Feed on your website. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to publish frequently updated works such as blogs or featured products. RSS defines a set of XML elements that are used to describe a channel or feed of information. An RSS feed is comprised of two parts, first is the metadata describing the channel and second is the records that make up the elements of the feed. RSS feeds allow your sites visitors to access the information on your site using software that reads these feeds. This will allow your site's visitors to stay up-to-date on the information on your site.

CakePHP allows for easy integration of RSS feeds into existing controller actions through the automatic router extension parsing. This allows us to specify what type of response we want from a URL through adding the proper extension to the URL such as http://www.yoursite.com/entries.rss. This alerts the router that your are asking for RSS formatted data in return. In addition, CakePHP has an RssHelper class that can be used to output parts of the metadata and elements in the feed through an easy to use helper.

Preparation

Before we begin making the feed we must alert the router that we want to allow for extensions to be parsed in the URL and that we want it to accept .rss as a valid extension. In your sites router file we add the following:

	Router::parseExtensions('rss');

Also for CakePHP to work it magic we must also have the RequestHandler in our controller's $components array. Now the router knows that we would like to parse urls that end in .rss as requesting RSS formatted responses. The next step of preparation is to add a default layout for rss feeds on your site. When you request a different format response the layout that is rendered will be selected from a sub-folder with the same name as the format. So in this case we would need a folder called /rss in the layouts folder in our CakePHP install. The view class will search for a file that has the same name as the layout that would be rendered if you were just rendering the html. In most cases this is the default.ctp layout file in the main layouts directory, but because we are requesting the response in RSS format we must add a default.ctp layout in the /layouts/rss/ sub-directory. This layout is our default RSS Feed layout.

	echo $rss->header();

	if (!isset($channel)) {
		$channel = array();
	}
	if (!isset($channel['title'])) {
		$channel['title'] = $title_for_layout;
	}

	echo $rss->document($rss->channel(array(), $channel, $content_for_layout));

Here in the layout our RssHelper shines through. We use the method RssHelper::channel() which generates the element and associated metadata elements. The $content_for_layout variable contains the output from the view. These then get passed to the RssHelper::document() method, which wraps the RSS document in the respective elements.

Controller

The controller needs no modification in the case of a simple RSS feed. This is because we are only adding a second view that is xml/rss to the action. The same data is used in both views and because CakePHP automatically sets the correct response type we don't need to tell it to render the correct view and layout for RSS. Here is the action method in the EntriesController for a basic view sorted by a published_date field and showing only if it is published.

	public function index() {
		$this->paginate['Entry'] = array(
			'conditions' => array('Entry.published' => 1),
			'order' => 'Entry.published_date DESC');
		$this->set('entries', $this->paginate());
	}

If you do have code that is specific for only the RSS view you can use the RequestHandler::isRss() to see if the action was called with the request for xml/rss formatting on response. This method returns a boolean value based on if the .rss extension was parsed in the URL.

	if ($this->RequestHandler->isRss()) {
		// RSS feed specific code goes here
	}

Note About Channel Metadata

It may feel right to put your metadata information in the index method in the controller, using Controller::set() to send the information to the views. This is inappropriate and is one of the most common snags that we have seen in the CakePHP community with creating RSS feeds. That information which is passed in the layout file to the RssHelper::channel() method should be set in the view using View::set() which will set the $channel variable for the layout in the view.

Views

As we had to put the layout in a subdirectory of the layouts folder we also need to create a view for the index action for the blogs controller. This is done by creating a directory /views/entries/rss/ which will hold our view file that will generate the RSS to render. You will need to add your RssHelper to the list of helpers in your controller so that it is automatically loaded in the view and the layout.

Our view begins by setting the $channel variable for the layout, this contains all the metadata for our RSS feed.

	$homeUrl = $html->url('/', true);
	$this->set('channel', array(
		'title' => __("Daniel's Recent Articles", true),
		'link' => $homeUrl,
		'description' => __("Most recent articles from Daniel.", true),
		'language' => 'en-us',
		'image' => array(
			'title' => 'Recent Articles from Daniel',
			'url' => FULL_BASE_URL . $this->webroot('/img/rss_feed_image', true),
			'link' => $homeUrl));

First we get the URL link for the website home that we will use for the links. Also we set the title, description and image to use for the RSS feed icon. By setting the channel variable using View::set() we are providing the layout the information to render the RSS feed's metadata elements.

The second part of the view generates the elements for the actual records of the feed. This is accomplished by looping through the data that has been passed to the view and using the RssHelper::item() method. The other method you can use, RssHelper::items() which takes a callback and an array of items for the feed. (The method I have seen used for the callback has always been called transformRss(). There is one downfall to this method, which is that you cannot use any of the other helper classes to prepare your data inside the callback method because the scope inside the method does not include anything that is not passed inside, thus not giving access to the TimeHelper or any other helper that you may need. The RssHelper::item() transforms the associative array into an element for each key value pair.

	foreach ($entries as $entry) {
		$postTime = strtotime($entry['Entry']['created']);

		$entryLink = array(
			'controller' => 'entries',
			'action' => 'view',
			'year' => date('Y', $postTime),
			'month' => date('m', $postTime),
			'day' => date('d', $postTime),
			$entry['Entry']['slug']);

		// This is the part where we clean the body text for output as the description 
		// of the rss item, this needs to have only text to make sure the feed validates
		$bodyText = preg_replace('=\(.*?)\=is', '', $entry['Entry']['body']);
		$bodyText = $text->stripLinks($bodyText);
		$bodyText = Sanitize::stripAll($bodyText);
		$bodyText = $text->truncate($bodyText, 400, '...', true, true);

		echo  $rss->item(array(), array(
			'title' => $entry['Entry']['title'],
			'link' => $entryLink,
			'guid' => array('url' => $entryLink, 'isPermaLink' => 'true'),
			'description' =>  $bodyText,
			'dc:creator' => $entry['Entry']['author'],
			'pubDate' => $entry['Entry']['created']));
	}

You can see above that we can use the loop to prepare the data to be transformed into XML elements. It is important to filter out any non-plain text charictars out of the description, especially if you are using a rich text editor for the body of your blog. In the code above we use the TextHelper::stripLinks() method and a few methods from the Sanitize class, but we recommend writing a comprehensive text cleaning helper to really scrub the text clean. Once we have set up the data for the feed, we can then use the RssHelper::item() method to create the XML in RSS format. Once you have all this setup, you can test your RSS feed by going to your site /entries/index.rss and you will see your new feed. It is always important that you validate your RSS feed before making it live. This can be done by visiting sites that validate the XML such as Feed Validator or the w3c site at http://validator.w3.org/feed/.

Latest articles

165 Views

Goodbye to 2025!

Well bakers… another advent calendar is coming to an end. I hope you enjoyed all of the topics covered each day. We are also closing the year with so much gratitude.    2025 was the 20th year of CakePHP, can you believe it? We had an amazing year with our team, the community and the CakePHP core. It was great connecting with those who attended CakeFest in Madrid, and we hope to have the opportunity to see more of you in 2026.    I cannot let the year end without getting a little sentimental. There is no better way to say it… THANK YOU. Thank you to the team who worked so hard, the core team that keeps pumping out releases, and most of all … thank you to our clients that trust us with their projects. CakeDC is successful because of the strong relationships we build with our network, and we hope to continue working with all of you for many years.    There are a lot of great things still to come in year 21! Could 2026 will be bringing us CakePHP 6?! Considering 21 is the legal drinking age in the US, maybe CakePHP 6 should be beer cake? Delicious. Stay tuned to find out.    Before I go, I am leaving you with something special. A note from Larry!   As we close out this year, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Twenty years ago, CakePHP started as a simple idea shared by a few of us who wanted to make building on the web easier and more enjoyable. Seeing how far it has come, and more importantly, seeing how many lives and careers it has impacted, is something I never take for granted. I am deeply grateful for our team, the core contributors, the community, and our clients who continue to believe in what we do. You are the reason CakePHP and CakeDC are still here, still growing, and still relevant after two decades. Here is to what we have built together, and to what is still ahead. Thank you for being part of this journey. Larry

Written by Amanda on December 24, 2025

196 Views

Pagination of multiple queries in CakePHP

Pagination of multiple queries in CakePHP

A less typical use case for pagination in an appication is the need to paginate multiples queries. In CakePHP you can achieve this with pagination scopes.

Users list

Lest use as an example a simple users list. // src/Controller/UsersController.php class UsersController extends AppController { protected array $paginate = [ 'limit' => 25, ]; public function index() { // Default model pagination $this->set('users', $this->paginate($this->Users)); } } // templates/Users/index.php <h2><?= __('Users list') ?>/h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('name', __('Name')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('email', __('Email')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('active', __('Active')) ?></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php foreach ($users as $user): ?> <tr> <td><?= h($user->name) ?></td> <td><?= h($user->email) ?></td> <td><?= $user->active ? 'Yes' : 'No' ?></td> </tr> <?php endforeach; ?> </tbody> </table> <?= $this->Paginator->counter() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->prev('« Previous') ?> <?= $this->Paginator->numbers() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->next('Next »') ?>

Pagination of multiple queries

Now, we want to display two paginated tables, one with the active users and the other with the inactive ones. // src/Controller/UsersController.php class UsersController extends AppController { protected array $paginate = [ 'Users' => [ 'scope' => 'active_users', 'limit' => 25, ], 'InactiveUsers' => [ 'scope' => 'inactive_users', 'limit' => 10, ], ]; public function index() { $activeUsers = $this->paginate( $this->Users->find()->where(['active' => true]), [scope: 'active_users'] ); // Load an additional table object with the custom alias set in the paginate property $inactiveUsersTable = $this->fetchTable('InactiveUsers', [ 'className' => \App\Model\Table\UsersTable::class, 'table' => 'users', 'entityClass' => 'App\Model\Entity\User', ]); $inactiveUsers = $this->paginate( $inactiveUsersTable->find()->where(['active' => false]), [scope: 'inactive_users'] ); $this->set(compact('users', 'inactiveUsers')); } } // templates/Users/index.php <?php // call `setPaginated` first with the results to be displayed next, so the paginator use the correct scope for the links $this->Paginator->setPaginated($users); ?> <h2><?= __('Active Users') ?>/h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('name', __('Name')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('email', __('Email')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('active', __('Active')) ?></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php foreach ($users as $user): ?> <tr> <td><?= h($user->name) ?></td> <td><?= h($user->email) ?></td> <td><?= $user->active ? 'Yes' : 'No' ?></td> </tr> <?php endforeach; ?> </tbody> </table> <?= $this->Paginator->counter() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->prev('« Previous') ?> <?= $this->Paginator->numbers() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->next('Next »') ?> <?php // call `setPaginated` first with the results to be displayed next, so the paginator use the correct scope for the links $this->Paginator->setPaginated($inactiveUsers); ?> <h2><?= __('Inactive Users') ?>/h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('name', __('Name')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('email', __('Email')) ?></th> <th><?= $this->Paginator->sort('active', __('Active')) ?></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php foreach ($inactiveUsers as $inactiveUser): ?> <tr> <td><?= h($inactiveUser->name) ?></td> <td><?= h($inactiveUser->email) ?></td> <td><?= $inactiveUser->active ? 'Yes' : 'No' ?></td> </tr> <?php endforeach; ?> </tbody> </table> <?= $this->Paginator->counter() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->prev('« Previous') ?> <?= $this->Paginator->numbers() ?> <?= $this->Paginator->next('Next »') ?> And with this you have two paginated tables in the same request.

Written by Rperez on December 23, 2025

331 Views

Clean DI in CakePHP 5.3: Say Goodbye to fetchTable()

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2025 (December 23rd, 2025)

Introduction: The Death of the "Hidden" Dependency

For years, accessing data in CakePHP meant "grabbing" it from the global state. Whether using TableRegistry::getTableLocator()->get() or the LocatorAwareTrait’s $this->fetchTable(), your classes reached out to a locator to find what they needed. While convenient, this created hidden dependencies. A class constructor might look empty, despite the class being secretly reliant on multiple database tables. This made unit testing cumbersome, forcing you to stub the global TableLocator just to inject a mock. CakePHP 5.3 changes the game with Inversion of Control. With the framework currently in its Release Candidate (RC) stage and a stable release expected soon, now is the perfect time to explore these architectural improvements. By using the new TableContainer as a delegate for your PSR-11 container, tables can now be automatically injected directly into your constructors. This shift to explicit dependencies makes your code cleaner, fully type-hinted, and ready for modern testing standards. The Old Way (Hidden Dependency): public function execute() { $users = $this->fetchTable('Users'); // Where did this come from? } The 5.3 Way (Explicit Dependency): public function __construct(protected UsersTable $users) {} public function execute() { $this->users->find(); // Explicit and testable. }

Enabling the Delegate

Open src/Application.php and update the services() method by delegating table resolution to the TableContainer. // src/Application.php use Cake\ORM\TableContainer; public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void { // Register the TableContainer as a delegate $container->delegate(new TableContainer()); }

How it works under the hood

When you type-hint a class ending in Table (e.g., UsersTable), the main PSR-11 container doesn't initially know how to instantiate it. Because you've registered a delegate, it passes the request to the TableContainer, which then:
  1. Validates: It verifies the class name and ensures it is a subclass of \Cake\ORM\Table.
  2. Locates: It uses the TableLocator to fetch the correct instance (handling all the usual CakePHP ORM configuration behind the scenes).
  3. Resolves: It returns the fully configured Table object back to the main container to be injected.
Note: The naming convention is strict. The TableContainer specifically looks for the Table suffix. If you have a custom class that extends the base Table class but is named UsersRepository, the delegate will skip it, and the container will fail to resolve the dependency.

Practical Example: Cleaner Services

Now, your domain services no longer need to know about the LocatorAwareTrait. They simply ask for what they need. namespace App\Service; use App\Model\Table\UsersTable; class UserManagerService { // No more TableRegistry::get() or $this->fetchTable() public function __construct( protected UsersTable $users ) {} public function activateUser(int $id): void { $user = $this->users->get($id); // ... logic } } Next, open src/Application.php and update the services() method by delegating table resolution to the TableContainer. // src/Application.php use App\Model\Table\UsersTable; use App\Service\UserManagerService; use Cake\ORM\TableContainer; public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void { // Register the TableContainer as a delegate $container->delegate(new TableContainer()); // Register your service with the table as constructor argument $container ->add(UserManagerService::class) ->addArgument(UsersTable::class); }

Why this is a game changer for Testing

Because the table is injected via the constructor, you can now swap it for a mock effortlessly in your test suite without touching the global state of the application. $mockUsers = $this->createMock(UsersTable::class); $service = new UserManagerService($mockUsers); // Pure injection!

Conclusion: Small Change, Big Impact

At first glance, adding a single line to your Application::services() method might seem like a minor update. However, TableContainer represents a significant shift in how we approach CakePHP architecture. By delegating table resolution to the container, we gain:
  • True Type-Safety: Your IDE and static analysis tools now recognize the exact Table class being used. This is a massive win for PHPStan users—no more "Call to an undefined method" errors or messy @var docblock workarounds just to prove to your CI that a method exists.
  • Zero-Effort Mocking: Testing a service no longer requires manipulating the global TableRegistry state. Simply pass a mock object into the constructor and move on.
  • Standardization: Your CakePHP code now aligns with modern PHP practices found in any PSR-compliant ecosystem, making your application more maintainable and easier for new developers to understand.
If you plan to upgrade to CakePHP 5.3 upon its release, this is one of the easiest wins for your codebase. It’s time to stop fetching your tables and start receiving them. This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2025 (December 23rd, 2025)

Written by Arusinowski on December 23, 2025

We Bake with CakePHP