Question

I’ve just started with CakePHP and am having a problem withe the concept of plugins and components.

The main issue is how to include their views in my own app. For example, on the cakephp site, there is a tutorial for plugins, but they never mention how to include it in the output of my own app.

I want to create a login bar that appears on every page of my site. You know, something that either says Username Password or Welcome Fred Flintstone at the top of every page.

It seems a plug-in would be best for this as it could be included in every controller I created. But, as I mentioned, I have no idea how to include the plugin view with my app views.

lee

Answer 1

In this case, you would create an element:

/app/View/Elements/login_bar.ctp

echo $this->Form->create('User'); 
echo $this->Form->inputs(array('username', 'password'));
echo $this->Form->end('login');

and include it in your views (or layout) with:

echo $this->Element('login_bar');

See: http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/views.html#elements