Setup CakePHP App using Composer and Grunt

This repo is a starting point for a CakePHP app. Here’s what you get:

• CakePHP
• BoostCake for Bootstrap integration
• Bootstrap
• Font Awesome
• jQuery
• Underscore
• Backbone
• Grunt
  • jshint & uglify for JavaScript debugging, compression, and optimization
  • LESS with Source Maps (see Tuts+ Tutorial) for Chrome Dev Tools debugging and CSS compression
  • Image compression with smushit
  • Watch with PHP hinting

Prerequisites

• Install node.js

• Install composer

Setup

Composer

• composer install

  • You should now have an app and lib directory

CakePHP

Refer to http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/installation/advanced-installation.html

• Bake the project

  • Windows: lib/bin/cake bake project app

  • Look okay? (y/n/q) [y] > y

  • You should now have the complete CakePHP structure under app

• Edit app/webroot/index.php. Replace CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH (around line 55)

define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', ROOT . DS . 'lib' . DS . 'cakephp' . DS . 'cakephp' . DS . 'lib');

• Edit app/Config/bootstrap.php. Add the following

//Enable Plugins
CakePlugin::loadAll();

// Load Composer autoload.
require ROOT . DS . 'lib' . DS . 'autoload.php';

// Remove and re-prepend CakePHP's autoloader as Composer thinks it is the
// most important.
// See: http://goo.gl/kKVJO7
spl_autoload_unregister(array('App', 'load'));
spl_autoload_register(array('App', 'load'), true, true);

• Edit AppController class in app/Controller/AppController.php

class AppController extends Controller {
	public $components = array('DebugKit.Toolbar', 'Session');
}

• Your base CakePHP app is setup.

• Create the database and configure app/Config/database.php

• Setup BoostCake: Edit /app/controllers/AppController.php. Add the following in the AppController class:

	public $helpers = array(
		'Session',
		'Html' => array('className' => 'BoostCake.BoostCakeHtml'),
		'Form' => array('className' => 'BoostCake.BoostCakeForm'),
		'Paginator' => array('className' => 'BoostCake.BoostCakePaginator'),
	);

• Set the bootstrap template as the default: Edit /app/controllers/AppController.php. Add the following in the AppController class

    function beforeFilter() {
        parent::beforeFilter();
        $this->layout = 'bootstrap';
    }

Grunt

• npm install

  • This should setup Grunt and all of the grunt modules. You should see a node_modules directory created

• grunt

  • This will run grunt for the first time.

• grunt less

  • Compile less files for the first time