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CakePHP Migrations plugin: easily version and deploy whole applications

Written by Pierre on February 05, 2010
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This article is a quick introduction to the Migrations plugin, open sourced a few weeks ago by our company. You will see how simple it is to use the plugin and what you could do with it. I hope this article will show you the benefits of using migrations in your CakePHP applications and make you give it a try right after the reading!

Here is a one-sentence description of the plugin: the Migrations plugin allows developers to easily version and automate the creation / update process of any database schema and application data from the command line.

For information, CakeDC uses this plugin on its project since several years to make team collaboration and deployment easier. The plugin has been entirely rewritten a few months ago and fully tested (code coverage >95% as always at CakeDC) before being open sourced under the MIT license. It is now available to the community along with its documentation... and it is free!

Why is it useful?

It has been a while since companies integrated Source Code Management in their development process and CVS, SVN, Mercurial or Git are now common tools. Inspired from the open source movement it is also a good practice for single developers to version application source code.

As you might know, an application almost always depends of the database schema it is aimed to use... however it is not easy to version both the source code and database schema with a SCM. Let's take the example of a CakePHP application: until now the only way to do was to version a single file, either a sql dump or a CakePHP schema.php file generated with the cake schema shell. These two approaches are not very convenient to use on a daily basis, the first one forcing the developer to drop and recreate the whole database every time!

Moreover, a web application development is never really finished (there are always new features to add, software updates or bug fixing to do...) and deploying these change on a test or production server is always a delicate task.

Here comes the Migrations plugin! It provides a simple and easy way to version a database... and to perform many other different tasks thanks to its callback system. Here are some features:

  • keep a local database schema up-to-date: you just have to run all non applied migrations to update the local database schema to the latest version
  • make team work easier: when several developers work on the same application it is important that all of them work with the same database schema during all the development cycle. With migrations every commit is tied to the database schema at this precise instant, which makes easy switching branches and resetting a branch to a specific commit.
  • make installation and updates easier: ready to push the new version of your application live? You will only have to push the sources on the server and run all non applied migrations!
  • migrate more than database schema: the callback system allows you to do everything you want before (or after) applying (or reverting) each migration. Here are some examples: creating an initial admin account, add initial or test data to the application (lorem ipsums, categories, content...), update values from the database, send an email if debug > 0... The only limit may be your imagination ;)

Where can I find the code?

Announced a few weeks ago, a packaged version of the plugin can be downloaded from the "Plugins" section of CakeDC.com. This page contains a link to download the 1.0 version, the plugin documentation and the Github project for tickets and direct Git access to the repository.

To make people aware of the need to show their support to the Cake Software Fundation by donating a few bucks (this is unfortunately not done enough), the plugin was first available to donors only. The "Download without donation" button was added later, when the repository was made public! However, if you find this plugin useful please consider making a donation to the CSF... that is the best thing you could do for thanking us.

Even better! A sample application was also released for those who want to see how migrations could be used and integrated in an application. To play with it, Download the code or git clone the project using:

git clone git://codaset.com/cakedc/sample-migrations-application.git sample_migrations

You will only need to create a database.php configuration file and update CakePHP's core location to make the application work. Git users, run

git submodule init
git submodule update

to automatically add the migrations plugin as a submodule!

What do I need to use it in my application?

Note: the packaged plugin is for the CakePHP 1.3 version only. You can either download the 1.3-beta package of the framework, or use the 1.2 branch available in the Git repository.

Adding the plugin to an existing application is very simple. If you downloaded the archive containing the plugin code, unzip it in the "/plugins/migrations" folder of your application. Git users can add it as a submodule with the following command:

git submodule add git://codaset.com/cakedc/migrations.git plugins/migrations

To check that it is installed correctly, execute the following command from your application root (it will display the available command to use the plugin):

cake migration help

If you encounter any problem here, please read the official documentation about CakePHP's console usage.

How does it work?

This post is not aimed at providing a comprehensive tutorial on how to use the plugin, thus I will just introduce the most useful commands along with some use cases.

For a complete documentation, please read the official documentation provided on the plugin page. For a simple (but useful for understanding purpose) use case you can take a look at the sample application introduced above. Going through the commit history will allow you to understand how migrations could be used in a development process.

Create a migration

To generate a new migration, type the following command

cake migration generate

The tool will ask you to give a name to the migration and suggest to do a dump of the current database schema. If a "schema.php" file is found in the application, it will ask you if you want to generate a diff between this schema and your current database one.

Generated migration files will be added to the "/config/migrations" application directory.

Apply / Revert migrations

When you pull an application containing migrations, several commands are available to apply or revert migrations. The simplest one is:

cake migration

It will display all the found migrations along with their status (applied or not applied) and id number. Just enter a migration number to update your database to the correct version. Some convenience commands are also available. You can use:

cake migration up, down, all or reset

These commands will respectively:

  • apply the next migration
  • revert the latest applied migration
  • apply all non applied migrations (and thus update the schema to the most recent version)
  • revert all applied migrations (and empty the database)

Migrations for plugins

Adding plugins to an existing application often implies adding new tables to the database or altering existing ones. The Migrations plugin brings a quick and efficient way to automate this installation. On the one hand developers can easily add necessary migrations to their plugin (making upgrades easier), on the other hand users can apply them as easily.

The only difference compared with commands introduced above is the parameter "-plugin pluginname" that needs to be added. Here is how the user will install the database for the newly added / updated plugin "test":

cake migration run all -plugin test

I would like to highlight the fact that callbacks allow the developer to do everything they want before / after each migration. It is convenient for adding initial data, and one can even implement a callback method opening the bootstrap.php file to append plugin's configuration entries there (it is just an example ;)).

... going further

Of course, feel free to add any remark or example of migrations use in the comments.

As this post is not aimed at providing support for the plugin, I recommend you to use the official tools available:

  • If you found a bug or want to suggest enhancements: open a ticket!
  • An installation problem or a question about the plugin usage? Ask your question to the community!
  • You would like a custom version of this plugin, or professional related services... contact us, it is our job ;)

I hope you enjoyed this post, it is now time for you to start playing with the Migrations plugin...

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Almost 20 years: A bit of history about CakePHP

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 12th 2024) As many of you may know, CakePHP started back in 2005 with a minimal version of a framework for PHP. Then, in May 2006, version 1.0 of CakePHP was released including many of the features we still use today. Over the years a lot of features have been added to the project, and others have been greatly improved. As the framework has evolved, many people have been involved on this project, and we think now it is good time to say *THANK YOU* to everyone that has participated in greater or lesser extent. In this article, we will briefly recap some of the changes to the major (or most important) CakePHP versions throughout history. We will highlight the features that are still present in current version.   CakePHP 1.0 and 1.1: May 2006

  • Compatibility with PHP4 and PHP5
  • Integrated CRUD for database interaction and simplified queries
  • Application Scaffolding
  • Model View Controller (MVC) Architecture
  • Request dispatcher with good looking, custom URLs
  • Built-in Validation
  • Fast and flexible templating (PHP syntax, with helpers)
  • View Helpers for AJAX, Javascript, HTML Forms and more
  • Security, Session, and Request Handling Components
  • Flexible access control lists
  • Data Sanitization
  • Flexible View Caching
As you can see, most of the original features from CakePHP 1.x are still present in the 5.x version. Of course PHP4 and PHP5 compatibility does not makes sense right now, and Security and Session components have been replaced by most modern solutions.   CakePHP 1.2: Dec 2008
  • CakePHP 1.0 and 1.1 features
  • Code generation
  • Email and Cookie component joins the party
  • Localization
For CakePHP 1.2, we first see the code generation using the well-known Bake tool (now a plugin). Additionally, it is the first version where we have a way to create multi-language applications.   CakePHP 1.3: Apr 2010
  • Improved Logging
  • Removed inflections.php
  • Some internal library renames and changes.
  • Controller and Component improvements.
  • Routing changes
  • Performance improvement on Cache classes
  CakePHP 2.0: October 2011
  • Dropped PHP 4 support
  • New Error and Exception handlers which are easier to configure, and ease working with errors such as page not found, unauthorized error and lots more.
  • Improved I18n functions for easier multilingual development.
  • Support for injecting your own objects to act as CakePHP libraries
  • New Request and Response objects for easier handling of HTTP requests.
  • Completely refactored Auth system.
  • Brand new email library with support for multiple transports.
  • Dropped SimpleUnit in favor of PHPUnit.
  • Improved support for PostgreSql, SQLite and SqlServer.
  • HTML 5 form inputs support in form helper.
  • Huge performance improvements compared to version 1.3
CakePHP 2.0 did not change a lot from the way things were done in CakePHP 1.3, but it laid the foundation for the success of the following versions (including 2.x and the next major 3.x)   CakePHP 3.0: March 2015
  • A New ORM
  • Faster and more flexible routing
  • Improved migrations using Phinx
  • Better internationalization
  • Improved Debugging Toolbar
  • Composer usage
  • Standalone libraries
  • View cells
It is impossible to explain how much the framework changed from 2.x to 3.x. It is probably the most revolutionary version, since it introduced lots of improvements and changes like the amazing ORM and the database migrations management, both still in use. Even after almost 10 years it looks very timely and up-to-date.   CakePHP 4.0: December 2019
  • PHP 7.2 required.
  • Streamlined APIs with all deprecated methods and behavior removed.
  • Additional typehints across the framework giving you errors faster.
  • Improved error messages across the framework.
  • A refreshed application skeleton design.
  • New database types for fixed length strings (CHAR), datetime with
    microseconds, and datetime with timezone types.
  • Table now features OrFail methods that raise exceptions on failure
    making error handling more explicit and straightforward.
  • Middleware for CSP headers, Form tampering prevention, and HTTPS enforcement.
  • Cake\Routing\Asset to make generating asset URLs simple from anywhere in
    your application code.
  • FormHelper now generates HTML5 validation errors.
  • FormHelper now generates HTML5 datetime input elements.
It seems as though the list is self-explanatory. If CakePHP 3.0 was revolutionary, CakePHP 4.0 continued modernizing the framework with middlewares, new table methods, database types and a new application skeleton.   CakePHP 5.0: September 2023
  • PHP 8.1 required.
  • Improved typehints across the framework. CakePHP now leverages union types to formalize the types of many parameters across the framework.
  • Upgraded to PHPUnit 10.x
  • Support for read and write database connection roles.
  • New enum type mapping support in the ORM enabling more expressive model layers with improved type checking.
  • Table finders with named parameters, providing more expressive query building APIs.
  • Added time-only Time type and greatly improved Date and DateTime support via chronos 3.x.
  • Support for PSR17 HTTP factories was added.
And here we are, 1 year after CakePHP 5 was released, we are currently in version 5.1.20 (released November 10th). It is unbelievable that 20 years have already passed, and the team is more than excited about the upcoming changes and features we expect in CakePHP 6, 7 ,8 and beyond!   To finish we would like to make a special tribute (and thank them again) to the top 8 contributors from all time! Especially to our lead (and oldest active) developer, Mark Story (@markstory on Github or his Website) , who has been contributing for almost 17 years with more than 17k commits (an incredible average of 1000+ commits per year). Remember your name could be here as well! You just need to start contributing! (check out https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/blob/5.x/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md). This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 12th 2024)

Written by Ajibarra on December 12, 2024

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Troubleshooting Queue Jobs with Queue Monitor Plugin

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 11th 2024) In this article we'll show how to easily monitor the queue jobs in CakePHP 5.0 using the CakePHP Queue Monitor plugin. Queue Monitor Plugin is a companion plugin for the official CakePHP Queue plugin .

Why I should monitor the queues

Monitoring queue jobs is crucial for maintaining the health and efficiency of your application's background processing. Here are some compelling reasons why you should monitor queue jobs:
  • Performance and Throughput: Monitoring helps ensure that your jobs are processed within acceptable time frames, preventing bottlenecks and ensuring that your application runs smoothly.
  • Error Detection and Handling: By keeping an eye on your queue jobs, you can quickly identify and address errors or failures in the jobs. This allows you to reduce the potential downtime.
  • Scalability: As your application grows, monitoring helps you understand how the queue system is handling the increased load, guiding decisions about scaling up or distributing workloads among multiple workers to speed up the job processing.
  • User Experience: Ensuring that background tasks are processed efficiently directly impacts the user experience. For example, timely processing of tasks like email notifications or data updates keeps users satisfied.
By monitoring your queue jobs, you can maintain a robust and efficient application that enhances performance and ensures reliability.

Key Features

This plugin will allow you to monitor the queue, in particular:
  • monitor and notify about jobs that exceed the specified working time
  • check if configured queues are working correctly
  • clear the queue of queued jobs
  • inspect job messages that have been processed

Getting Started

Before we discuss the functionality, we will go through the installation and configuration of the plugin.

Step 1: Installing the plugin

First you need to install the plugin into your CakePHP 5 application. To do this, you will need to run this command in the root of your project: composer require cakedc/queue-monitor When the plugin is installed please load it into your application: bin/cake plugin load CakeDC/QueueMonitor After the plugin is loaded please run the required migrations: bin/cake migrations migrate -p CakeDC/QueueMonitor

Step 2: Configuring the monitoring

To configure monitoring, place the following directives in your config/app_local.php and adjust values if needed. // ... 'QueueMonitor' => [ 'disable' => false, 'mailerConfig' => 'default', 'longJobInMinutes' => 30, 'purgeLogsOlderThanDays' => 7, 'notificationRecipients' => '[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]', ], // ... Options explained:
  • QueueMonitor.disable - With this setting you can enable or disable the queue monitoring, as the queue monitoring is enabled by default.
  • QueueMonitor.mailerConfig - mailer config used for notification, the default is default mailer.
  • QueueMonitor.longJobInMinutes - This is the time in minutes after which the job will be considered as working too long, and will be taken into account when sending notifications. The default values is 30 minutes.
  • QueueMonitor.purgeLogsOlderThanDays - This is the time in days after which logs will be deleted from the database to keep the log table small. The default value is 7 days.
  • QueueMonitor.notificationRecipients - This is a comma-separated list of recipients of notifications about jobs exceeding the configured working time.

Step 3: Configuring queue to use the monitoring

To enable the monitoring capabilities to a queue, you will need to add the listener to the queue configurations that you want monitor: 'Queue' => [ 'default' => [ // ... 'listener' => \CakeDC\QueueMonitor\Listener\QueueMonitorListener::class, // ... ] ],

Step 4: Configure notification cronjob

To receive emails about jobs that take too long to process, you need to add the following command to cron: bin/cake queue-monitor notify It is best to configure this command to run every few minutes.

Step 5: Configure the log purging

To keep the log table size small, you need to add automatic log purging to cron: bin/cake queue-monitor purge-logs It is best to configure this command to run every day.

Features

Continuous queue job monitoring

With the Queue Monitoring plugin installed and configured, all of your queued jobs are logged with time points and full message content. The entire processing of each job is also logged, starting from the moment the job is enqueued until one of the many ways the job ends. When any of the jobs exceeds the configured working time, you will be notified by email.

Inspecting the queue logs

Using CakeDC\QueueMonitor\Model\Table\LogsTable you can view all logged job messages. This functionality will be expanded in subsequent versions of the plugin.

Testing the queues

To quickly test if all queues are running correctly, run this command (replace [email protected] with working email address: bin/cake queue-monitor test-enqueue [email protected] This command will send the email through all configured queues.

Purging the queues

To purge the content of a specified queue you can use the purge queue command: bin/cake queue-monitor purge-queue your-queue-name The above command will remove all pending queue jobs from the specified queue. To purge all queues you can use command: bin/cake queue-monitor purge-queue --all

Conclusion

And that's it, you have successfully enabled queue monitoring and troubleshooting tools in your application. This plugin is in active development and more features will be added to it soon, some of them are:
  • browsing the content of messages in the queue
  • deleting a specified number of messages from the queue
  • deleting the first job in the queue
  • CRUD for queue logs
  • asynchronous queue logging to prevent degradation of job processing performance in case of high job frequency
We look forward to your feedback and contributions as we continue to enhance this plugin for the benefit of the entire CakePHP community. This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 11th 2024)

Written by Arusinowski on December 11, 2024

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Introducing the CakePHP Goto View VSCode Extension

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 10th 2024) As we embrace the spirit of giving during this holiday season, I'm glad to announce a new tool that aims to enhance the development experience for CakePHP developers using Visual Studio Code. The CakePHP Goto View extension brings intelligent navigation and autocompletion features to streamline your CakePHP development workflow.

Why Another Extension?

While CakePHP's convention over configuration approach makes development intuitive, navigating between related files in large projects can still be challenging. Whether you're working with templates, elements, cells, or assets, finding the right file quickly can impact your development speed and focus. This extension was born from the daily challenges we face as CakePHP developers, designed to make file navigation and discovery as seamless as possible while respecting CakePHP's conventions.

Key Features

Smart Navigation

Controller and Template Integration

  • Seamlessly navigate between controllers and their views by hovering over ->render() calls
  • Quick access to template files directly from controller actions
  • Smart detection of template paths based on controller context

Element and Cell Management

  • Instant access to element files by hovering over $this->element() calls
  • Complete cell navigation showing both cell class and template files
  • Support for nested elements and plugin elements

Asset File Navigation

  • Quick access to JavaScript files through Html->script() calls
  • CSS file navigation via Html->css() helper references
  • Support for both direct paths and plugin assets
  • Integration with asset_compress.ini configuration for compressed assets

Email Template Support

  • Navigate to both HTML and text versions of email templates
  • Quick access from Mailer classes to corresponding templates
  • Support for plugin-specific email templates

Plugin-Aware Intelligence

  • Smart resolution of files across different plugins
  • Support for both app-level and plugin-level resources
  • Automatic detection of plugin overrides in your application
  • Composer autoload integration for accurate namespace resolution

Autocompletion

  • Context-aware suggestions for elements, cells, and assets
  • Support for plugin resources with proper namespacing
  • Intelligent path completion based on your project structure

Developer Experience

  • Hover information showing related files and their locations
  • Real-time map updates as you modify your project structure
  • Support for both application and plugin resources
  • Minimal configuration needed - it just works!

Community Contribution

As with any open-source project, this extension is open to community involvement. Whether it's reporting bugs, suggesting features, or contributing code, every input helps make this tool better for everyone in the CakePHP ecosystem.

Getting Started

The extension is available in the Visual Studio Code marketplace. Simply search for "CakePHP Goto View" in your extensions panel or visit the marketplace website. Once installed, the extension automatically detects your CakePHP project structure and begins working immediately. No complex configuration required - it's designed to follow CakePHP conventions out of the box.

Conclusion

In the spirit of the CakePHP community's collaborative nature, this extension is our contribution to making CakePHP development even more enjoyable. We hope it helps streamline your development workflow and makes navigating your CakePHP projects a breeze. We look forward to your feedback and contributions as we continue to enhance this tool for the benefit of the entire CakePHP community. This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2024 (December 10th 2024)

Written by Yevgeny on December 10, 2024

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