Question

I’m preparing for an interview and i’m new to cakephp, while searching in the internet i came across this questions…
“What is the first file that gets loaded when you run a application using cakephp?”
Answer:
Interviewer : what is the first file that gets loaded when you run a application using cakephp.,
Candidate : can you change that file.
Interviewer: yes
bootstrap.php , yes it can be changed , either through index.php , or through htaccess
Which file is loaded first, if that particular file is not changable.
I tried to find out the answer, but couldn’t get it.
Can any one help me on this please?

Answer 1

The very first file being loaded is index.php (as per the .htaccess rewrite rules) in the webroot folder, which will add CakePHP’s core in the include path

CakePHP 1.3

if (!defined('CORE_PATH')) {
        if (function_exists('ini_set') && ini_set('include_path', CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH . PATH_SEPARATOR . ROOT . DS . APP_DIR . DS . PATH_SEPARATOR . ini_get('include_path'))) {
            define('APP_PATH', null);
            define('CORE_PATH', null);
        } else {
            define('APP_PATH', ROOT . DS . APP_DIR . DS);
            define('CORE_PATH', CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH . DS);
        }
    }
    if (!include(CORE_PATH . 'cake' . DS . 'bootstrap.php')) {
        trigger_error("CakePHP core could not be found.  Check the value of CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH in APP/webroot/index.php.  It should point to the directory containing your " . DS . "cake core directory and your " . DS . "vendors root directory.", E_USER_ERROR);
    }

CakePHP 2.1

if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) {
        if (function_exists('ini_set')) {
            ini_set('include_path', ROOT . DS . 'lib' . PATH_SEPARATOR . ini_get('include_path'));
        }
        if (!include('Cake' . DS . 'bootstrap.php')) {
            $failed = true;
        }
    } else {
        if (!include(CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH . DS . 'Cake' . DS . 'bootstrap.php')) {
            $failed = true;
        }
    }

It then includes bootstrap.php in both case.

So the answer is : index.php and you shall not modify it (unless you are in some particular cases), then app/Config/bootstrap.php and you may modify it.