Question

In my CakePHP 2 application I have such vendor. I need to create an instance of this vendor class inside my controller class. So I will use that instance inside my controller’s different functions.

App::import('Vendor', 'fancyVendor', array('file' => 'fancyVendor.php'));

class MyController extends AppController {

    public $fancyVendor;

    function beforeFilter() {
       $fancyVendor = new fancyVendor();
       $fancyVendor->setValue("12");
    }

    function showMe() {
       echo $fancyVendor->getValue();
    }
}

Inside my showMe function, I can’t get the value that I set inside my beforeFilter function. Is there a proper way to instantiate it?

Answer 1

You need to learn about scope. You have initialised a variable in the beforeFilter() scope and then trying to use it in the showMe scope. The two are completely different.

You can make a variable that is scoped to the entire class, normally called a property…

function beforeFilter() {
   $this->fancyVendor = new fancyVendor();
   $this->fancyVendor->setValue("12");
}

function showMe() {
   echo $this->fancyVendor->getValue();
}

Another point to note is that you can use the App::uses() method to load the class. According to your naming it would work. (class is lazy loaded this way)

App::uses('fancyVendor', 'Vendor');