Question

When visiting a default CakePHP site, it takes you to “home.ctp” page.

Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'display', 'home'));

I want to add a few elements there (like blog posts), so I thought I could just add this to the PagesController() class:

public function home() {
    $this->set('blogposts', $this->Blogpost->find('all'));
}

But that does not work.

So: what is the correct way to add something like this on the home page (or any other page for that matter)

Answer 1

The preferred option is to create a custom route for the home page but you can also override the PagesController’s display function

Option 1: (Preferred Method)

Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'mycontroller', 'action' => 'myaction'));

Option 2

Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'home'));

Option 3:

class PagesController {
    function display()
    {
        // default controller code here
        // your custom code here
    }
}

The final option is using requestAction in your view, but it isn’t recommended as it has a huge performance drawback

Option 4: (Not recommended)

$newsitems = $this->requestAction(array('controller' => 'newsitems', 'action' => 'getlatestnews', 'limit' => 10));