Developing with CakePHP: Creating a simple admin control panel

If you are like me, you prefer to have a specific url mapped to your applications control panel/backend etc.
This is usually something along the lines of www.url.com/admin or www.url.com/cms.

Normally during the CakePHP “bake” process, the system will ask you what you want your admin route to be (default “admin”). Once this has been set you are merely 3 simple steps away from creating your own simple user control panel….

Step 1) Routing the admin url.
Add the following to your app/config/routes.php

Router::connect(‘/admin/’, array(‘controller’ => ‘admin’, ‘action’ => ‘index’));

This will route url.com/admin to the admin controller index function

Step 2) Creating the admin controller
Create the admin_controller.php file in /app/controllers/ and add the following code

class AdminController extends AppController
{
var $name = ‘Admin’;
var $uses = array(); //This controller does not need to use a model

function index(){

}
}

Step 3) Create your views
Create the app/views/admin/ directory and add an index.ctp view to it, with whaterver code you prefer (mine is merely a bunch of links to other controllers at this stage)

• link(‘Posts’, ‘posts/’);
• link(‘Comments’, ‘comments/’);