By Iain Lopata (Dino)

In a recent CakePHP 1.1 development project I needed to provide end users with the ability to independently maintain static web pages using Adobe Contribute. This proved more difficult than I had expected because of at least four factors a) The URL structure used in a standard cake app not meeting Contribute requirements; b) The file extensions used for cake pages; c) The method that Adobe Contribute uses to confirm that its FTP configuration is pointing to the correct directory on the web server; and d) The mechanism used by Adobe Contribute to ensure that ‘Guard Pages’ are in place to prevent users from reading draft versions of web pages before they are published. This solution uses a custom controller to overcome these issues.

I followed the following four steps to get this solution to work for me:

1. Configure routes.php
I made a simple change to routes.php to redirect requests for static pages, including the site’s home page to my custom controller named display_controller.php:


$Route->connect('/', array('controller' => 'display', 'action' => 'display', 'home.shtml'));
$Route->connect('/pages/*', array('controller' => 'display', 'action' => 'display'));

2. Change file extension for static pages I then, somewhat regrettably, changed the file extension on all of the files in the /views/pages directory from .thtml to .shtml. I could have used .html, .htm and several other options. However I have been unable to persuade Contribute to allow me to edit files with a .thtml extension and so eventually decided to change to a supported file extension.

3. Implement controller to display static pages
The following controller code implemented the capability to support Contribute editing:

Controller Class:

<?php
define('SITE_HOME_PAGE','home.shtml');
define('GUARD_PAGE','index.html');
define('ADOBE_TEST_FILE_PREFIX','pages/TMP');

class DisplayController extends AppController {
var $uses = array();
var $helpers = array('Html', 'Javascript', 'Form');

/*
* This function displays static pages in a manner that will permit them to be edited using Contribute
*/
function display () {
if (empty($this->data)){

$this->layout = 'default';

if (isset($_GET['url'])) {
$path = $_GET['url'];
// If there is a trailing slash drop it
if (substr($path,strlen($path)-1) == '/') {$path =substr($path,0,strlen($path)-1);};

if (is_dir(VIEWS . $path)) {
if (substr($path,0,9) == ADOBE_TEST_FILE_PREFIX) {
$this->layout = 'blank';
$viewFullPath = VIEWS . $path . DS . GUARD_PAGE;
}
else {
$viewFullPath = VIEWS . $path . DS . SITE_HOME_PAGE;
}
}
else {
if (is_file(VIEWS . $path)) {
$viewFullPath = VIEWS . $path;
} else {
$this->redirect('/pages/' . SITE_HOME_PAGE);
exit;
}
};
$this->render(null, null,$viewFullPath);
} else {
$this->redirect('/pages/' . SITE_HOME_PAGE);}
}
}
}
?>
4. Create a blank layout You will also note that this controller action requires a new view layout which I chose to call ‘blank’. This layout renders the page content without any header or footer. This is required because when checking for Guard Pages, Contribute checks to ensure that the page it reads over HTTP is exactly the same as thethe page it has written over FTP. For the sake of completeness the code for the blank template is as follows:

View Template:


echo $content_for_layout;

Hopefully this is helpful to someone. Any problems setting this up please let me know



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