Question

Morning guys,

So this is my first time developing a plugin for CakePHP. Here’s what I am doing in startUp of the component.

//component
function startUp(&$controller){
    //....
    if($render){
        $controller->render("return", "ajax");
    }
}

By default render will look at app/views/<controllers>/return.ctp and app/views/layouts/ajax for this render call.

Is there anyway that I can give a directive to render from app/my_plugin/views/awesome_stuffs/return.ctp and app/my_plugin/views/layout/ajax.ctp instead?

I believe the third param of Controller::render($file, $layout, $file) could do the job, but is there any better Cake way of doing things?

Plus, is that considered a good practice to take over controller’s rendering function like that?

Answer 1

One way is to call the PLUGIN controller/action URL in your AJAX call, instead of the main app controller/action URL.

ex:
instead of:

http://domain.com/controller/action

you call:

http://domain.com/my_plugin/controller/action

When you do it this way, the plugin views & layouts are called automagically. See:

http://book.cakephp.org/view/1118/Plugin-Tips

http://book.cakephp.org/view/1115/Plugin-Views

Otherwise, the only way I know of is manually setting paths as you mentioned or controller-wide via:

var $viewPath = 'path/to/plugin/views/';
var $layoutPath = 'path/to/plugin/layouts/';