Some of usefull cakephp titbits. These cakephp titbits are for quick reference that are help full while developing the application. These titbits are most commonly used in the development and comes as handy reference.

To get the paths, Url and URL query string

echo $this->request->webroot  will print the webroot directory path.
echo $this->request->base will print the base path.
echo $this->request->here will print the full address to the current request.
echo $this->request->query will print the query string parameters that are passed through URL as query string.

To detect if the current page is the homepage

if ($this->here == $this->webroot){ // this is home page }
or 
if ($this->here == $this->base.'/'){ // this is home page }

To include Element in layout or view

echo $this->element('navbar');

// create the sidebar block. 
$this->start('sidebar'); 
echo $this->element('sidebar/recent_topics');
echo $this->element('sidebar/recent_comments');
$this->end();

To load CSS and JS files in layout

echo $this->fetch(‘css’);
echo $this->Html->css(array(‘forms’, ‘tables’, ‘menu’));
echo $this->fetch(‘script’);
echo $this->Html->css(array(‘forms’, ‘tables’, ‘menu’));

Loading vendor files

// Load the class Abc in app/Vendor/Abc.php
App::uses('Abc', 'Vendor');

// To load app/Vendor/abc.php:
App::import('Vendor', 'abc');

//To load app/Vendor/abc/xyz.php:
App::import('Vendor', 'abc/xyz');

To include one controller in another controller

// The same as require('Controller/UsersController.php');
App::import('Controller', 'Users');

// We need to load the class
$Users = new UsersController();

// If we want the model associations, components, etc to be loaded
$Users->constructClasses();

Cakephp HtmlHelper functions can be found here

Cakephp FormHelper functions can be found here