CakeDC Blog


RSS Feeds, Fast and Easy

For my first entry, I am going to talk about how to create an RSS Feed on your website. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to publish frequently updated works such as blogs or featured products. RSS defines a set of XML elements that are used to describe a channel or feed of information. An RSS feed is comprised of two parts, first is the metadata describing the channel and second is the records that make up the elements of the feed. RSS feeds allow your sites visitors to access the information on your site using software that reads these feeds. This will allow your site's visitors to stay up-to-date on the information on your site.

CakePHP allows for easy integration of RSS feeds into existing controller actions through the automatic router extension parsing. This allows us to specify what type of response we want from a URL through adding the proper extension to the URL such as This alerts the router that your are asking for RSS formatted data in return. In addition, CakePHP has an RssHelper class that can be used to output parts of the metadata and elements in the feed through an easy to use helper.


Before we begin making the feed we must alert the router that we want to allow for extensions to be parsed in the URL and that we want it to accept .rss as a valid extension. In your sites router file we add the following:


Also for CakePHP to work it magic we must also have the RequestHandler in our controller's $components array. Now the router knows that we would like to parse urls that end in .rss as requesting RSS formatted responses. The next step of preparation is to add a default layout for rss feeds on your site. When you request a different format response the layout that is rendered will be selected from a sub-folder with the same name as the format. So in this case we would need a folder called /rss in the layouts folder in our CakePHP install. The view class will search for a file that has the same name as the layout that would be rendered if you were just rendering the html. In most cases this is the default.ctp layout file in the main layouts directory, but because we are requesting the response in RSS format we must add a default.ctp layout in the /layouts/rss/ sub-directory. This layout is our default RSS Feed layout.

	echo $rss->header();

	if (!isset($channel)) {
		$channel = array();
	if (!isset($channel['title'])) {
		$channel['title'] = $title_for_layout;

	echo $rss->document($rss->channel(array(), $channel, $content_for_layout));

Here in the layout our RssHelper shines through. We use the method RssHelper::channel() which generates the element and associated metadata elements. The $content_for_layout variable contains the output from the view. These then get passed to the RssHelper::document() method, which wraps the RSS document in the respective elements.


The controller needs no modification in the case of a simple RSS feed. This is because we are only adding a second view that is xml/rss to the action. The same data is used in both views and because CakePHP automatically sets the correct response type we don't need to tell it to render the correct view and layout for RSS. Here is the action method in the EntriesController for a basic view sorted by a published_date field and showing only if it is published.

	public function index() {
		$this->paginate['Entry'] = array(
			'conditions' => array('Entry.published' => 1),
			'order' => 'Entry.published_date DESC');
		$this->set('entries', $this->paginate());

If you do have code that is specific for only the RSS view you can use the RequestHandler::isRss() to see if the action was called with the request for xml/rss formatting on response. This method returns a boolean value based on if the .rss extension was parsed in the URL.

		// RSS feed specific code goes here

Note About Channel Metadata

It may feel right to put your metadata information in the index method in the controller, using Controller::set() to send the information to the views. This is inappropriate and is one of the most common snags that we have seen in the CakePHP community with creating RSS feeds. That information which is passed in the layout file to the RssHelper::channel() method should be set in the view using View::set() which will set the $channel variable for the layout in the view.


As we had to put the layout in a subdirectory of the layouts folder we also need to create a view for the index action for the blogs controller. This is done by creating a directory /views/entries/rss/ which will hold our view file that will generate the RSS to render. You will need to add your RssHelper to the list of helpers in your controller so that it is automatically loaded in the view and the layout.

Our view begins by setting the $channel variable for the layout, this contains all the metadata for our RSS feed.

	$homeUrl = $html->url('/', true);
	$this->set('channel', array(
		'title' => __("Daniel's Recent Articles", true),
		'link' => $homeUrl,
		'description' => __("Most recent articles from Daniel.", true),
		'language' => 'en-us',
		'image' => array(
			'title' => 'Recent Articles from Daniel',
			'url' => FULL_BASE_URL . $this->webroot('/img/rss_feed_image', true),
			'link' => $homeUrl));

First we get the URL link for the website home that we will use for the links. Also we set the title, description and image to use for the RSS feed icon. By setting the channel variable using View::set() we are providing the layout the information to render the RSS feed's metadata elements.


	foreach ($entries as $entry) {
		$postTime = strtotime($entry['Entry']['created']);

		$entryLink = array(
			'controller' => 'entries',
			'action' => 'view',

		// This is the part where we clean the body text for output as the description 
		// of the rss item, this needs to have only text to make sure the feed validates
		$bodyText = preg_replace('=\(.*?)\=is', '', $entry['Entry']['body']);
		$bodyText = $text->stripLinks($bodyText);
		$bodyText = Sanitize::stripAll($bodyText);
		$bodyText = $text->truncate($bodyText, 400, '...', true, true);

		echo  $rss->item(array(), array(
			'title' => $entry['Entry']['title'],
			'link' => $entryLink,
			'guid' => array('url' => $entryLink, 'isPermaLink' => 'true'),
			'description' =>  $bodyText,
			'dc:creator' => $entry['Entry']['author'],
			'pubDate' => $entry['Entry']['created']));

You can see above that we can use the loop to prepare the data to be transformed into XML elements. It is important to filter out any non-plain text charictars out of the description, especially if you are using a rich text editor for the body of your blog. In the code above we use the TextHelper::stripLinks() method and a few methods from the Sanitize class, but we recommend writing a comprehensive text cleaning helper to really scrub the text clean. Once we have set up the data for the feed, we can then use the RssHelper::item() method to create the XML in RSS format. Once you have all this setup, you can test your RSS feed by going to your site /entries/index.rss and you will see your new feed. It is always important that you validate your RSS feed before making it live. This can be done by visiting sites that validate the XML such as Feed Validator or the w3c site at

Latest articles

CakePHP API Plugin

Are you creating an API in CakePHP? This task looks very popular these days, and most of our clients need an API to expose certain services to their own rich client applications, or third party services. Even if it's easy to configure CakePHP to expose a REST API, and there are other plugins that could help you building an API, we found ourselves working on specific tweaks per project to adjust the way the API was designed, so we decided to wrap all these ideas and create a specific CakePHP API Plugin including

  • Services definition
  • Integrated CRUD
  • Nested resources
  • Pagination
  • Sorting
  • Associations
  • Versioning
  • Custom Extensions (data format / transformers)
  • Self documentation
We've gathered all the best practices around API building and CakePHP and wrapped them into an easy to install and setup Plugin to be used as the foundation of your API intensive CakePHP projects. Let's walkthru some of the Plugin features using an example application: the bookmarker tutorial We'll assume you've already created a new CakePHP application and configured it to use the bookmarker database (schema dump here

Setting up the CakePHP API Plugin

Download the plugin first composer require cakedc/cakephp-api:dev-master Then ensure plugin is loaded in you bootstrap.php file Plugin::load('CakeDC/Api', ['bootstrap' => true, 'routes' => true]);

Now you have an API!

Test your newly configured "default" API using curl curl -X GET You'll get something similar to: { "status": "success", "data": [], "pagination": { "page": 1, "limit": 20, "pages": 0, "count": 0 }, "links": [ { "name": "self", "href": "http:\/\/\/api\/bookmarks", "rel": "\/api\/bookmarks", "method": "GET" }, { "name": "bookmarks:add", "href": "http:\/\/\/api\/bookmarks", "rel": "\/api\/bookmarks", "method": "POST" } ] } If you look at the provided output you'll identify we've used a JSend default renderer (status, data) and we append some extra data under 'links' (HATEOAS dynamically generated for your CRUDs) and pagination. The specific "extensions" used can be configured and custom extensions created for your specific needs, see We'll publish a couple tutorials soon covering some of the features implemented, and explaining how did we use the CakePHP API Plugin to address specific use cases. Meanwhile, please check the documentation here

Giving back to the community


Create Google app for web oauth2 login step by step

Here's a step by step tutorial about how to create a web oauth2 app in Google dashboard.

Google app oauth login app 1
  • Add some cool name for your new Google app project and click "Create"
Google app oauth login app 2
  • Under "Library" section, create a new Google+ API project
Google app oauth login app 3
  • Click "Enable" in the dashboard tab
Google app oauth login app 4
  • Under "Credentials" menu, click "Oauth consent screen" tab and enter some cool name to be displayed to users when requesting their access to your application. Then click "Save".
Google app oauth login app 5
  • Under "Credentials" menu, click "Create credentials" and select "Oauth client ID".
Google app oauth login app 6
  • Now click "Web application" radio, and type your domain name and oauth callback
    • Under "Authorized Javascript origins", add your domain name:
    • Under "Authorized redirect URIs", add all the allowed callback url's to your application. For example if you are using CakeDC/Users Plugin, you'll need to add
  • Then click "Save"
Google app oauth login app 7
  • Copy the Iauth client and secret id's into your application configuration
  • Be careful, some browsers will append blank spaces to the codes, remove any extra blank space (trim)
Google app oauth login app 8
  • Ensure the API is enabled, you can test your application now and check there is "Traffic" displayed
  You have now a Google app configured to provide Oauth2 login to your web application. Enjoy!                  

Login with Google Oauth2 in CakePHP using CakeDC/Users Plugin

This article is inspired by this question in Stack Overflow and belongs to a series of articles describing the step by step tutorial to configure CakeDC Users Plugin with the most commonly used Oauth2 providers, in this case we'll configure Google login. We'll assume you have a working CakePHP application with no Auth configured yet.


Use composer to install the CakeDC Users Plugin and the required oauth2 providers To be able to configure the callbacks in Google dashboard, you'll need to create a virtual host for you application. You don't need a working domain name, you could use something like "" but Google requires a domain name (no localhost). composer require cakedc/users:@stable composer require league/oauth2-google:@stable Load it from your bootstrap.php file Plugin::load('CakeDC/Users', ['routes' => true, 'bootstrap' => true]); Run migrations to add 2 new tables: 'users' and 'social_accounts' bin/cake migrations migrate -p CakeDC/Users


Load the Component in your src/Controller/AppController.php public function initialize() { parent::initialize(); // // ... // $this->loadComponent('CakeDC/Users.UsersAuth'); }

Create a new Google application

<?php // /config/users.php file contents $config = [ 'Users.Social.login' => true, '' => 'CLIENT_ID_HERE', '' => 'SECRET_HERE', ]; return $config;
  • Modify your bootstrap.php file to ensure the config file is loaded this way
Configure::write('Users.config', ['users']); //add this line before Plugin::load('CakeDC/Users... Plugin::load('CakeDC/Users', ['routes' => true, 'bootstrap' => true]); This file will override any configuration key present in the Plugin, you can check the configuration options here Configuration. Now you are ready to go to your login page and click "Sign up with Google". Upon successful login, a new user will be created in your users table and related oauth2 tokens will be saved in the social_accounts table. The new user created will have the "user" role (by default, but customizable). And based on your Auth rules, this user will be able to access your site. You are done!

Read more about CakeDC Users Plugin

Giving back to the community

This Plugin's development has been sponsored by the Cake Development Corporation. Contact us if you are interested in: We hope you've enjoyed this short tutorial covering the Google login, stay tunned for new CakePHP + Users Plugin tutorials coming soon...

We Bake with CakePHP