Question

I have a model called PageMetaData that contains a title and a description. This is to be tied to any other model and to be used as the title tag and meta description for the page.

So I have a model called Brand. Brand has a field called page_meta_data_id and Brand belongsTo PageMetaData

Now on the view for Brand I can run this code:

if(!empty($data['PageMetaData']['title']))
{
    $this->set('title_for_layout', $data['PageMetaData']['title']);
}
else if(!empty($data['Brand']['name']))
{
    $this->set('title_for_layout', $data['Brand']['name']);
}
if(!empty($data['PageMetaData']['description']))
{
    echo $this->Html->meta('description', $data['PageMetaData']['description'],array('inline'=>false));
}
else if(!empty($data['Brand']['description']))
{
    echo $this->Html->meta('description', $data['Brand']['description'],array('inline'=>false));
}

And if a PageMetaData has been associated to the current Brand and has a value for title, it will set that as the page title, otherwise if the brand has a field called name it will us that. Same for description.

The problem is I don’t want to have to diplicate this code in every view for every model that uses PageMetaData.

I cannot figure out where I can abstract the code to, to avoid duplication.

I cannot put it in a Behavior or a Helper because you cannot set the title from either. I cannot put it in a Component because it cannot access the data found from the model.

Is there somewhere I can put this code for reuse?

Answer 1

You can possibly use elements for this. have a look at the cookbook link:

http://book.cakephp.org/view/1081/Elements