Using the TextHelper with CakePHP

First we begin by importing it in to our code. �Open a controller that controls your view:

<?php
class MyController extends AppController {
...
var $helpers = array('Text');
...
}
?>

Now, let's open up our view and begin using it:

Email: <?php echo $this->Text->autoLinkEmails($my_email);?><br/>
Website: <?php echo $this->Text->autoLinkUrls($my_url);?><br/>
Company Description:<br/>
<?php echo $this->Text->autoLink($my_desc);?>

Above are three different scenarios all doing very similar things. �The first example, will convert our normal email address into a "mailto" link allowing users one-click access to send an email. �The second example, will turn our website into a clickable link. �Finally, the third example will convert both an email and/or a URL into a link!

Now you don't need to write crazy regular expressions looking for what might be the start of a link and the end of link; it's already done for you. �Not only that, it has been well tested!

Next we have the "truncate" function. �Do you have a news listing where you want to show a brief description of the article? �See the sample below to help you get it done quickly:

<h1>News</h1>
<?php foreach ($articles as $article):?>
<div>
<div><?php echo $article['title'];?></div>
<div>
<?php echo $this->Text->truncate($article['description'], 250, array('ending' => '...', 'exact' => false));?>
</div>
</div>
<?php endforeach;?>

Not done yet, the last example I want to touch upon is the toList function; another excellent time saver. �In this example, let's assume that we have a user profile and we have them enter their interests in. �In today's society this would most likely be done with some sort of auto complete functionality to avoid the user having typos and to speed things up. �We could then store a comma separated list of this interests in the users table. �Then when we want to display what the user is interested in, we use this handy function:

Interests: <?php echo $this->Text->toList(explode(',', $user['interests']));?>

Our comma separated list remains the same, but CakePHP has automatically added ", and " to our last interest automatically.

A few other great functions that I will allow you to explore further are the following:

- highlight

- excerpt

- stripLinks

Visit the Cookbook for full details: http://book.cakephp.org/view/1469/Text

Enjoy!

Published on Jan 24, 2011

Tags: CakePHP Tutorial | helpers