ansaurus

Question

cakephp routing problem (or maybe just confusion)

Answer 1

+2 A:

Just to be clear what directories we're talking about, a Cake installation comes with these folders:

/
  app/
    webroot/
  cake

You will have to hit the top / directory with your browser to get a response from Cake at all. All routes are relative to that top / directory.

Let's say you have installed Cake in your web server like so:

/
  htdocs/
    someotherproject/
    mycakeapp/
      app/
        webroot/
      cake/

The htdocs directory is the root of your web server. If you go to http://localhost/, your web server will respond with the contents of /htdocs/. It's not even invoking Cake, so Cake can't route anything.

You'll have to open http://localhost/mycakeapp/ to invoke Cake. From there, Cake will do its routing. The Cake route Router::connect('/', …) corresponds to the URL http://localhost/mycakeapp/. All Cake routes are relative to the app installation path. The Cake routing is app-internal routing, it does not correspond to the absolute URL.

If you want http://localhost/ to be your Cake app, Cake will need to be the only app residing in /htdocs/. You can't have multiple apps in the root and yet have any one of them be "the root app"†‡.

For local development purposes this should be perfectly fine. When uploading the app to a real server with a real domain you'll usually make it the one and only app.

† Well you could, with elaborate rewrite-rules, virtual host configurations or by placing files in Cake's /app/webroot/ folder. Usually more hassle than it's worth though, keep your projects separate.
‡ You can't have your Cake and eat it, too. zing

deceze 2010-07-28 23:53:33

Ah okay, I think I was getting confused with '/' being relative then, thanks for the great answer and the hilarious cake-based pun :)

Infiniti Fizz 2010-07-29 10:03:27

Actually sorry, I've still got a problem here. If I go to "localhost/posts/" I get redirected to the directory listing for "posts/app/webroot" rather than going where I thought I was routing. I'm using the same Routing as given in my question for the root folder '/' to go to the 'posts' controller's index() function.I thought that would mean going to 'localhost/posts/' takes me there but it doesn't, only 'localhost/posts/posts/' does.(According to your example, replace posts with mywebapp as the folder name).Sorry for unticking but I've just realised this problem.Thanks for your time.

Infiniti Fizz 2010-07-29 10:08:42

This also means when I do the "delete" or "edit" links, I get redirected to the 'posts/app/webroot' directory listing, and only when I type in 'localhost/posts/posts/' again do I see the flash() "The post was deleted", so it seems my routing problem is messing up the redirection as well. The redirect code is "$this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));"Thanks,InfinitiFizz

Infiniti Fizz 2010-07-29 10:13:39

@Infiniti So what's your directory structure? `/htdocs/posts/` is the `/htdocs/mycakeapp` from my example? Then the `/posts/posts` is expected. If you're seeing a directory listing for `app/webroot/`, it would seem an `.htaccess` file has gone missing. There are three of those, in `/`, `/app` and `/app/webroot`. Make sure they're there.

deceze 2010-07-29 22:56:29

Yeah same except mycakeapp=posts. I've got all three .htaccess files and they are all the same as the default ones from when I unpacked cakephp. Any ideas?Also there is the routes.php problem where it won't redirect to index() of posts_controller when I'm in 'htdocs/posts/' even though '/posts/' is where the app, cake, etc. folders are. routes.php looks as follows: Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'index'));

Infiniti Fizz 2010-07-30 18:41:20

@Infiniti Just to be clear, routes don't *redirect*. Routes are used to determine *which controller and action to invoke for which URL*. `Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'index'));` means *"run `PostsController::index()` when somebody visits the URL `/` (`localhost/posts/` in your case)"*. Does that clear things up?

deceze 2010-07-30 22:22:30

Ah okay yeah it does thanks. But even that doesn't seem to be working, I just get "Index of /posts/app/webroot" with the directory list rather than the index() function when I go to "localhost/posts/" is this a mod_rewrite problem?

Infiniti Fizz 2010-07-31 12:44:53

@Infiniti It would appear so. Cake is not even invoked by the webserver.

deceze 2010-07-31 12:58:49

Hmm okay, I've looked through the mod_rewrite stuff in the cakephp book but it seems everything is as it should be. Everything else about cakephp works, I've got some controllers, models and views working together to alter database tables but its just this routing/url problem that's plaguing me at the moment. I suppose I'll just run through all the mod_rewrite stuff again and hope I missed something. Thank you so much for all the help @deceze it is really amazing that you've put so much time and effort into helping me, I hope I can do the same for you some day :) Thanks.

Infiniti Fizz 2010-08-01 11:05:20

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

cakephp routing problem (or maybe just confusion)

related questions