Code Generation with Bake

CakePHP's Bake console is another effort to get you up and running in CakePHP – fast. The Bake console can create any of CakePHP's basic ingredients: models, views and controllers. And we aren't just talking skeleton classes: Bake can create a fully functional application in just a few minutes. In fact, Bake is a natural step to take once an application has been scaffolded.

Installing Bake

Bake is provided by the pieceofcake2/bake plugin. Applications created from the pieceofcake2/app skeleton already have it as a development dependency. Otherwise install it with Composer:

composer require --dev pieceofcake2/bake

Composer installs the plugin into plugins/Bake/. This relies on the allow-plugins and installer-paths settings in your composer.json described in Installing a plugin with Composer; the pieceofcake2/app skeleton already has them. Load the plugin in your config/bootstrap.php:

// config/bootstrap.php
CakePlugin::load('Bake');

Because Bake is a development dependency, it is not installed when you deploy with composer install --no-dev. Loading a plugin that is not installed throws a MissingPluginException, so make sure this line only runs where the plugin is installed.

Piece of Cake 2 fork

Bake is no longer part of the core. It must be installed and loaded as the pieceofcake2/bake plugin before bake commands are available.

Running Bake

See The CakePHP Console section for instructions on how to use the CakePHP console in general. Bake is run from the project root with bin/cake bake. The cake console is run using the PHP CLI (command line interface). If you have problems running the script, ensure that you have the PHP CLI installed and that it has the proper extensions enabled (eg: pdo_mysql). If the database host is 'localhost' and the connection fails from the command line, try '127.0.0.1' instead.

When running Bake for the first time, you'll be prompted to create a Database Configuration file, if you haven't created one already.

After you've created a Database Configuration file, running Bake will present you with the following options:

---------------------------------------------------------------
App : src
Path: /path-to/project/src/
---------------------------------------------------------------
Interactive Bake Shell
---------------------------------------------------------------
[D]atabase Configuration
[M]odel
[V]iew
[C]ontroller
[P]roject
[F]ixture
[T]est case
[Q]uit
What would you like to Bake? (D/M/V/C/P/F/T/Q)
>

Alternatively, you can run any of these commands directly from the command line:

$ bin/cake bake db_config
$ bin/cake bake model
$ bin/cake bake view
$ bin/cake bake controller
$ bin/cake bake project
$ bin/cake bake fixture
$ bin/cake bake test
$ bin/cake bake plugin plugin_name
$ bin/cake bake all

Use bin/cake bake --help to see all subcommands and options. For example, --connection (-c) selects the database connection and --theme (-t) selects a bake theme.

Changed in version 2.5

Test files produced by bake test include calls to PHPUnit's markTestIncomplete() to draw attention to empty test methods. Before 2.5, empty tests pass silently.

Where baked files are written

Bake writes the generated files to the directories of your application's layout:

File type	Modern layout	Legacy layout
Models	src/Model/	app/Model/
Controllers	src/Controller/	app/Controller/
View templates	templates/<Controller>/	app/View/<Controller>/
Test cases	tests/TestCase/<Type>/	app/Test/Case/<Type>/
Fixtures	tests/Fixture/	app/Test/Fixture/

For a plugin with a tests/ directory, test cases and fixtures are written to the plugin's tests/TestCase/ and tests/Fixture/; otherwise to its Test/Case/ and Test/Fixture/.

INFO

These locations require pieceofcake2/bake 1.0.3 or later. Earlier versions wrote view templates to src/View/, test cases to tests/Case/ and fixtures to src/Test/Fixture/ in the modern layout, so the files had to be moved.

bake project copies the legacy app/ skeleton contained in the Bake plugin. To start a new application with the modern layout, use composer create-project pieceofcake2/app instead (see Installation).

Modify default HTML produced by "baked" templates

If you wish to modify the default HTML output produced by the "bake" command, you create a bake theme. The default templates are in the Bake plugin's plugins/Bake/Console/Templates/default/ directory:

• actions/ - controller actions
• classes/ - controller, model, fixture and test classes
• views/ - view templates (index.ctp, view.ctp and form.ctp)

Bake looks for themes in src/Console/Templates/ of your application and in Console/Templates/ of each loaded plugin.

For baking custom views

1. Go into: plugins/Bake/Console/Templates/default/views
2. Notice the 3 files there
3. Copy them to your: src/Console/Templates/[themename]/views
4. Make changes to the HTML output to control the way "bake" builds your views

The [themename] path segment should be the name of the bake theme that you are creating. Bake theme names need to be unique, so don't use 'default'. When more than one theme is available, Bake asks which one to use, or you can choose it with the --theme option:

bin/cake bake view Posts --theme myTheme

In the legacy layout, themes go into app/Console/Templates/[themename]/.

For baking custom projects

1. Go into: plugins/Bake/Console/Templates/skel
2. Notice the base application files there
3. Copy them to your: src/Console/Templates/skel
4. Make changes to the HTML output to control the way "bake" builds your views
5. Pass the skeleton path parameter to the project task

bin/cake bake project --skel src/Console/Templates/skel

NOTE

• You must run the specific project task bin/cake bake project so that the path parameter can be passed.
• The template path is relative to the current path of the Command Line Interface.
• Since the full path to the skeleton needs to be manually entered, you can specify any directory holding your template build you want, including using multiple templates.