Watch out: CakePHP screencasts

Fabio Cevasco — Sat, 20 May 2006 15:47:00 -0600

Tutorials are great, articles are helpful, manuals are essential and the API is your best friend, but there’s still something missing there… Unfortunately podcasts are not yet available, but the CakePHP team is proud to announce the creation of two screencasts in an effort to help new bakers familiarizing with CakePHP’s concepts. This is old news now, the screencasts section came together with the site overhaul but I only got a chance to take a look at them (one of them only, to be totally honest) recently, and so here’s a spoil… erhm, a detailed description of John Anderson’s screencast about the Blog Tutorial.

There’s something I’ll never do: a screencast. Recording every mouse movement, every word or piece of code typed in half an hour? No way! And what happens if I mistype something? People will keep pointing out the fact that I was starting to type </h2> to close a </h1> tag, or that I waited an eternity like five full seconds before deciding what to do. I guess I’m quite paranoid… John did it, and he did it well. Using just bash, vim and Safari he was able to record an excellent 30-minutes screencast featuring the blog tutorial. Before people start complaining that the blog tutorial should be completed in fifteen minutes, keep in mind that John’s screencast is meant to show everything clearly to new users, via a trial and error approach if necessary.

Here’s what happens in the screencast, nothing new if your read the blog tutorial, but still interesting, especially if you’re new to Cake. Unfortunately there’s no audio, but the video talks by itself and John will occasionally write some comments here and there.

0:01 – 5:00

SVN checkout to get the latest CakePHP version
make app/tmp writeable
execute queries (table posts)
insert some test posts
create database config file: modify 3 lines of database.php
CakePHP is now able to connect to database
create app/models/post.php model
create posts_controller.php [John uses Vim as preferred PHP editor]
try to access /posts/, error: missing method index()
create function index() in postscontroller.php able to fetch posts
refresh, missing index view
create index.thtml displaying the raw posts array

5:01 – 10:00

index.thtml: display posts with table and foreach iteration
add hyperlink in index.thtml to view posts
access /posts/view/1 -> missing method view()
add view() method in postscontroller.php
create view.thtml to display
Raw view post with pre tags and print_r()

10:01 – 15:00

display post properly with <p> tags
add link in index.thtml to add a post
missing method -> add()
add add() in controller
missing view [trial and error, trial and error…]
create add.thtml, using the Html Helper to create input tags easily

15:01 – 20:00

add.thtml (continued)
testing add form
view added post
start adding another (for validation purposes) [stop before submitting]
modify post.php model, valid_not_empty for title and body
modify view to trigger validation $html->tagErrorMsg()
test: no body, message displayed
test: no title, message displayed
add another post, everything works
[pause: five seconds]
back to the controller, create delete() function

20:01 – 25:00

delete function (continued)
add “Actions” table column in index.thtml, with link delete post
delete two posts
take a breath
add link in index.thtml to edit post
refresh page, mouse over edit links…
back to controller, add edit function [we learnt abour CakePHP errors alright]

25:01 – 27:38

pause, 5 sec [should I write edit.thtml from scratch]
copy add.thtml as edit.thtml
change just the title and form action
[pause: 3 sec]
test edit link
edit a post
move around, switch views
edit config/routes.php
set default route to posts/index
refresh – all done!

That’s it. All in a 40MB .mov file. Download it from here.

H3RALD: Watch out: CakePHP screencasts

Watch out: CakePHP screencasts