Question

Fairly experienced programmer but new to CakePHP 2.1 and spending my day struggling to get a custom Helper to work in View by following the manual: http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/views/helpers.html

I’ve not been able to find an answer and would greatly appreciate any Cake expertise.

My helper file in app/Helper/EntriesHelper.php:

App::uses('AppHelper', 'View/Helper');

class EntriesHelper extends AppHelper {

    public function __construct(View $view, $settings = array()) {
        parent::__construct($view, $settings);
    }

    public function spanWrapper($content) {

        if(substr($content,0,1) == "@") {
            return "<span class='label label-warning'>$content</span>";
        }
        else if(substr($content,0,1) == "#") {
            return "<span class='label label-default'>$content</span>";
        } 
        else if (substr($content,0,4) == "http" || substr($content,0,3) == "www") {
            return "<span class='label'>$content</span>";
        }

        return $content;

    }

}

And my controller in app/Controller/EntriesController:

App::uses('AppController', 'Controller');

class EntriesController extends AppController {

    public $helpers = array('Form', 'Html', 'Js', 'Time');

    #public $components = array('RequestHandler');

    #public $viewClass = 'Json';

    public function index() {

        $helpers[] = 'spanWrapper';
        $this->Entry->recursive = 1;
        $this->set('entries', $this->paginate());
        #$this->set('_serialize', array('entries'));

    }
}

But a call from my View fails:

$this->Entries->spanWrapper($entry['Entry']['title']);

With the error:

Notice (8): Undefined property: View::$Entries [CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 806]
Fatal error: Call to a member function spanWrapper() on a non-object in <path removed>/app/View/Entries/index.ctp on line 35

So the notice of undefined property is presumably causing the fatal error … but why so, if it’s implemented per the cookbook?

Darren

Answer 1

The correct syntax is $this->helpers[] = 'spanWrapper'; when loading a helper within a method, or add it to your public $helpers array instead.