CakePHP Request Cycle

We’ve covered the basic ingredients in CakePHP, so let’s look at how objects work together to complete a basic request. Continuing with our original request example, let’s imagine that our friend Ricardo just clicked on the “Buy A Custom Cake Now!” link on a CakePHP application’s landing page.

Flow diagram showing a typical CakePHP request

Figure: 2. Typical CakePHP Request.

Black = required element, Gray = optional element, Blue = callback

A typical CakePHP request cycle starts with a user requesting a page or resource in your application. At a high level, each request goes through the following steps −

• The webserver rewrite rules direct the request to webroot/index.php.
• Your application’s autoloader and bootstrap files are executed.
• Any dispatch filters that are configured can handle the request, and optionally generate a response.
• The dispatcher selects the appropriate controller & action based on routing rules.
• The controller’s action is called and the controller interacts with the required Models and Components.
• The controller delegates response creation to the View to generate the output resulting from the model data.
• The view uses Helpers and Cells to generate the response body and headers.
• The response is sent back to the client.