According to the cookbook the “to” variable only accepts a string, which is different to the “cc” and “bcc” variable. Both accept an array. To send an email to more than one address you have to sepearate the email addresses using a comma, which is pretty annoying as it is not documented.

I’ll open a ticket in Lighthouse to make the “to” variable also accept an array.

Update: I opened a new Lighhouse ticket and also made a contribution to the cookbook to document this behavior.

You can set the layout inside your view. All you have to do is adding the following code:

<?php
    $this->layout = 'your_layout';
?>

It’s easy, isn’t it?

Step 1: The custom validation function

To make the validation function available to all your models, you have to put it into your AppModel.

The function is designed to accept jpg, gif and png file extensions, but you can easily add other extensions in your model. Also the user is not forced to upload a file.

Filename: app/app_model.php

<?php
class AppModel extends Model {
    function validFile($check, $settings) {
        $_default = array(
            'allowEmpty' => true,
            'extensions' => array(
                0 => 'jpg',
                1 => 'jpeg',
                2 => 'gif',
                4 => 'png'
            )
        );

        $_settings = array_merge(
            $_default,
            ife(
                is_array($settings),
                $settings,
                array()
            )
        );

        // Remove first level of Array
        $_check = array_shift($check);

        if($_settings['allowEmpty'] == false && $_check['size'] == 0) {
            return true;
        }

        // No file uploaded.
        if($_settings['allowEmpty'] && $_check['size'] == 0) {
            return false;
        }

        // Check for Basic PHP file errors.
        if($_check['error'] !== 0) {
            return false;
        }

        // Use PHPs own file validation method.
        if(is_uploaded_file($_check['tmp_name']) == false) {
            return false;
        }

        // Use CakePHPs build-in rule to validate the extension
        return Validation::extension(
            $_check,
            $_settings['extensions']
        );
    }
}
?>

Step 2: Create the validation rule in your model

Now we are ready to use the rule in our model. As an example we will validate the user picture in our User model. We will only accept jpg files and force the user to upload an image.

Filename: app/models/user.php

<?php
class User extends AppModel {
    var $name = 'User';

    var $validate = array(
        'user_picture' => array(
            'rule' => array(
                'validFile',
                array(
                    'allowEmpty' => false,
                    'extensions' => array(
                        0 => 'jpg',
                        1 => 'jpeg'
                    )
                )
            ),
            'error' => 'You have to upload a jpg file.'
        )
    );
}
?>

Step 3:

After implementing the validation rule we are ready to build the code to move the uploaded file to the corresponding folder. But I will leave this up to you. ;-)

ALTER DATABASE `database` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
ALTER TABLE `table1` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
ALTER TABLE `table2` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
ALTER TABLE `table3` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

After running the above SQL script, the whole database including all (text) fields are converted to utf8.

As promised I made a small demo available for download. Just post a comment in case you need some help with the demo.

Before my article is available to the CakePHP community, someone from the CakePHP team has to review the article and then approve it. I don’t know how long it takes, but as I’m a little bit excited, I hope that the approval is done in the next few days.

Shortly after the approval is done, I’ll build a tiny demo and make it available for download on my blog.

Mainly my new posts will be about my experiences with CakePHP. I hope that some of my posts will be of such a value to anybody as other postings of the CakePHP community are to me. That’s the reason, why I start to blog in English. So please be patient with me, if my English is sometimes a little bit broken. :-)