the FYI Blog

Ever wondered how to create an application that supports
themes in cakephp?

Here is the example how this can be done.

step1:
In the AppController add the following function.

function beforeRender()
{
   $this->viewClass = "Theme";
   $this->theme = "two";
}

if the function is already there then add the following lines in it

$this->viewClass = "Theme";
$this->theme = "two";

Description:
here we are telling the controller to load the class ThemeView to render all the templates, this class is located in the

lib/Cake/View

folder having a file name “ThemeView.php”

(note that you can have your own class Also, provided it extends the class “View”

the member variable theme is set to two here, which will be the folder to look for the template(.ctp) files.

Step2:

Now copy all the files from the

[CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/ folder to the [CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/Themed/two/

folder

if the Current Controller is Pages and the current action is index then the ThemeView class will look for the file
Pages/index.ctp
in the

[CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/Themed/two/

folder having path

[CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/Themed/two/Pages/index.ctp

you can add your theme specific css in the default layout file.
To change themes just change the $this->theme variable and create directory structure accordingly.

It is not necessary to copy all the files from the [CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/ folder to the [CAKE_ROOT]/app/View/Themed/two/folder if any file is missing in this folder CakePhp will look for the file in its default location.
codecode

to dump all the defined variables use the following code

var_dump(get_defined_vars());

The removal of extra line, tab , spaces can be done by using a simple user defined function which is

 function getStripedDescription($description)
    {
    	$description=str_replace("\r\n",'',$description);
    	$description=str_replace("\n\r",'',$description);
    	$description=str_replace("\n",' ',$description);
    	$description=str_replace("\t",' ',$description);
    	$description = preg_replace("/ {2,}/", " ", $description);
    	$description=trim($description);
    	return $description;
    }

to get the cleaned description just call the function

getStripedDescription($text);

where $test is the variable that you want to clean.

I know that the function could be improved by the use of regular expression and could be shortened to one line only but for the ease of understanding i am using the current form.

to get all associated product of a configurable product let’s say the one with the entity id 555

you could use the following code

step 1:

first create the object of the catalog/product model
by the statement

   $productModel=Mage::getModel('catalog/product');

step 2:
Now that we have the object load the product with the id 555
use the statement

  $productObj=$productModel->load(555);

step 3:
The variable $productObj is now loaded with all the attribute of
the product whose entity id is 555 and all the attribute can be
fetched by

  echo $productObj->getData('');

where is the attribute code for an attribute

the simplest method will be to use the function

  getUsedProducts()

on the product attribute to get the child product but this not always return the associated Products
in order to get the associated product first get the type instance of the
product ie catalog/product_type_configurable to get it use the statement

   $productObj->getTypeInstance();

and to get the associated product use the statement

    $associatedProduct=$productObj->getTypeInstance()
        ->getUsedProducts();

Other Methods

   $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load(555);
  $AssociatedProduct=Mage::getModel('catalog/product_type_configurable')
->getUsedProducts(null,$product);

suppose you want to make sql query in magento that list all the categories

you can use my post or if you want to follow the magento method you can use the following

step 1. make an object of catalog model.

$obj=Mage::getModel('catalog/category');

the above code gives us the object of Mage_Catalog_Model_Category class .
step 2. Now that we have the object of the Mage_Catalog_Model_Category class lets now make the object of Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Mysql4_Category_Flat_Collection by using

$obj=Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection();

try

$obj->printlogquery(true);

the above will print the sql query

	SELECT `main_table`.`entity_id`, `main_table`.`level`,
main_table`.`path`, `main_table`.`position`,
`main_table`.`is_active`, `main_table`.`is_anchor` FROM
`catalog_category_flat_store_1` AS `main_table

which list the six attribute viz.

entity_id 	level 	path 	position 	is_active 	is_anchor

step 3. now if you want to select the name of the category also then you will have to do

$obj=Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection();
$obj->addAttributeToSelect('name');

gives you sql as

SELECT `main_table`.`entity_id`, `main_table`.`level`,
`main_table`.`path`, `main_table`.`position`,
`main_table`.`is_active`, `main_table`.`is_anchor`,
`main_table`.`name` FROM `catalog_category_flat_store_1` AS
`main_table`

if you want only the active categories then use

$obj=Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection();
$obj->addAttributeToSelect('name');
$obj->addAttributeToFilter('is_active',1);

gives you sql

SELECT `main_table`.`entity_id`, `main_table`.`level`,
`main_table`.`path`, `main_table`.`position`,
`main_table`.`is_active`, `main_table`.`is_anchor`,
`main_table`.`name` FROM `catalog_category_flat_store_1` AS
`main_table` WHERE (is_active = '1')

to print the list of categories thus returned

foreach ($obj as $o)
{
	print $o->getData('name');
}

note
you can always use

$obj=Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect('name')
->addAttributeToFilter('is_active',1);

to get the above result