Question

I’m trying to undestand how to link CSS or JS I’ll use it all over my CakePHP 1.3 application. I’ve read about putting assets in folder /app/webroot/css or /app/layouts/css (for css only in this case).

I’ve put a file named main.css and default.css but I’m missing something.

How can I do to fix it and which are the default rules for the default layout?

Answer 1

Normal

$this->Html->css('my_file'); corresponds to /app/webroot/css/my_file.css
$this->Html->script('my_file'); corresponds to /app/webroot/js/my_file.js

you add the php part from above to your layout file which is by default in /app/views/layouts/default.ctp (or in cake dir if you have not created one)

you can set the layout in the controller/app_controller setting $this->layout = 'foo'; which points to /app/views/layouts/foo.ctp

Themes

Setting the controller to $this->view = 'Theme'; will make cake use themes then setting $this->theme = 'SomeTheme'; in the controller will make cake use /app/views/themed/some_theme/* files

using $this->Html->script('my_file'); now points to /app/views/themed/some_theme/js/my_file.js and the same goes for the css.

css = http://book.cakephp.org/view/1437/css

js = http://book.cakephp.org/view/1589/script

themes = http://book.cakephp.org/view/1093/Themes

themes have the problem of serving css, js and other assets through php (ob_start(); include etc) and this is obviously slower than normal http serving. you can either copy files across to the webroot folder as explained in the bottom or be lazy and do something like the following https://gist.github.com/712622