All of our projects use as much of standard CakePHP libraries as possible. That’s why all of our CakePHP projects use AuthComponent for authentication.

The first thing we needed to do to was to create ability to access ID of a currently logged in user anywhere in the application. This was achieved by overloading the core AuthComponent:

controllers/components/loadsys_auth.php

<?php

uses('controller/components/auth');

class LoadsysAuthComponent extends AuthComponent {

        function initialize(&$controller) {
                ClassRegistry::addObject('LoadsysAuthComponent', $this);
                parent::initialize($controller);
        }

}

class LoadsysAuth {

        function &getInstance() {
                static $instance = array();
                if (!$instance) {
                        $instance[0] =& ClassRegistry::getObject('LoadsysAuthComponent');
                }
                return $instance[0];
        }

        static function getUser() {
                $_this =& LoadsysAuth::getInstance();
                return $_this->user();
        }

        static function getUserId() {
                $_this =& LoadsysAuth::getInstance();
                $user = $_this->user();
                return Set::extract($user, 'User.id');
        }

        static function getUserGroupId() {
                $_this =& LoadsysAuth::getInstance();
                $user = $_this->user();
                return Set::extract($user, 'User.user_group_id');
        }
}
?>

This structure will allow us to access user ID and user group ID from anywhere in the application by calling LoadsysAuth::getUserId() and LoadsysAuth::getUserGroupId(). This could be applied to many situations.

Now we need to include the component in our project:

app_controller.php

class AppController extends Controller {
	...
	var $components = array('LoadsysAuth');

	...
}

In order to set the creator_id and modifier_id for, we will have to put it in the base class:

app_model.php

<?php

class AppModel extends Model {
        function beforeSave() {
                $exists = $this->exists();
                if ( !$exists && $this->hasField('creator_id') && empty($this->data[$this->alias]['creator_id']) ) {
                        $this->data[$this->alias]['creator_id'] = LoadsysAuth::getUserId();
                }
                if ( $this->hasField('modifier_id') && empty($this->data[$this->alias]['modifier_id']) ) {
                        $this->data[$this->alias]['modifier_id'] = LoadsysAuth::getUserId();
                }
                return true;
        }
}

?>

In your application models, if you need to override the beforeSave callback, make sure you call the parent function:

Example:

create table articles (
 id int unsigned not null auto_increment,
 title varchar(255) not null,
 article varchar(255) not null,
 created datetime,
 creator_id int unsigned,
 modified datetime,
 modifier_id int unsigned,
 primary key(id)
);

models/article.php

<?php

class Article extends AppModel {
	...

	function beforeSave() {
		...
		return parent::beforeSave();
	}

	...
}

?>

To start, I really think that many people don’t use SVN properly to organize their code.  I myself am one who was like this.  In the past, we only worked in Trunk.  Great, we had the ability to work on our own working copies of the repo, but beyond that, doing code pushes and managing larger revisions versus simple fixes/updates becomes hard.

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Since the ACL uses Binary Search Trees, a lot of complex queries take place with the left and right nodes.

So, let’s take a look at how one of the most intensive ACL queries acts with no changes made.

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We develop in a framework called CakePHP.  It is getting very popular in the web development world.  However, CakePHP is simply what it is set out to be which is a framework and not a CMS or anything of that nature.  It is a framework that gives you a structured way to develop web applications and gives you handy tools to speed up the process.

Because of this, there is of course no SEO features built into its core.  However, with the number of SEO companies that are pushing our clients to implementing very important “SEO-Friendly” items, we have set out to make this a feature that is with every CakePHP application we develop.
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As a developer, you always think to work off frameworks or libraries.  For example, we use the CakePHP framework and we have written numerous of libraries to speed up development.  No sense in re-inventing the wheel.   Well, why can’t this be the same with CSS?  It sort of can.

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Google Adwords is a Google application that allows you to create marketing campaigns that will allow you to be found via their “Sponsors” section to the right of the regular search engine results. Basically, you create an ad that has a title, description, and a link to your site…you then place bids on keywords. For example, Loadsys would bid on “Chicago Web Design”. You place bids on a per click basis for these keywords. Scared of getting too many clicks above your budget? Google allows you to set daily limits on your campaigns.

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Google Analytics ( http://analytics.google.com ) has many cool features. The core elements Loadsys uses are Visitors, Traffic Sources, Map Overlay, and Site Overlay.

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With this in mind, we recommend setting up your main page so that it directly communicates with your primary audience. You can do this by sectioning off your page into blocks that contain important information. For example, maybe a products or services block with a bulleted list. Another block with an About Us that is only a few sentences. Maybe another block with either a testimonial or a bulleted list of why they should use you. Lastly, some sort of clean use of images that reflect what you offer.

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Web 2.0 truely means the idea of collaboration between people on the web. User driven information and communication so to speak. A good example of this are sites like MySpace, a friends communication portal or even Wikipedia, which is a user driven encyclopedia where content is added by anyone all over the world.
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