Cakephp - how to can error pages have its own layouts ?

Question

i wanna have a different layout for the page not found 404 page. how can i set a differet layout for that page ?

Answer 1

This simplest way I know of is to create this function in your AppController:

function appError($method, $messages)
{
}

You can then do whatever you want with the error, display it however you like, or not display it at all, send an email etc.. (I'm not sure if this method if still valid.)

There is also an option of creating app_error.php in your app root, with class AppError extends ErrorHandler in it, which enables you to override all kinds of errors. But I haven't done this yet, so I can't tell you more about it.

See cake/libs/error.php and cake/libs/object.php and of course The Book for more info.

Edit: Forgot to mention, once you caught the error, there's nothing preventing you to - for example - store the error in session, redirect to your "error handling controller", and then display it in your controller however you want.

Answer 2

Savant from the IRC helped me out and he suggest in using beforeRender(){} in the app_controller

// Before Render
function beforeRender() {
    if($this->name == 'CakeError') {
        //$this->layout = 'error';
    }
}

CakeError is a catchAll for errors :D