Extending a Core Helper

Plugins
1

I’ve got a plugin with a FormHelper that I’m wanting to extend the core FormHelper with. I can’t seem to figure out how to do it. I’m using CakePHP4.

Here’s what I have so far (excluding other things I’ve tried):

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

namespace CakeBootstrap\View\Helper;

use Cake\View\Helper\FormHelper as Helper;
use Cake\View\View;

/**
 * Form helper
 */
class FormHelper extends Helper
{
    /**
     * Default configuration.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $_defaultConfig = [];

    public function __construct(View $View, array $config = [])
    {
        parent::__construct($View, $config);
    }
    
}

Then in my AppView I’ve tried loading it in a couple of different ways, but they all throw a MissingHelperException.

$this->loadHelper('CakeBootstrap.Form');

and the following, which I don’t even know if its something that can be done:

$this->loadHelper('Form', ['className' => 'CakeBootstrap.Form']);

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Still haven’t figured it out.

3

Out of frustration and went in and baked a brand new plugin. Then baked a new helper for that plugin. Tried to load that plugin in the same exact way in the AppView and it says it can’t find it.

4

If you do use CakeBootstrap\View\Helper; and then $x = new FormHelper(null); do you get an error about the class not existing, or something else? If it says the class can’t be found, then it sounds like maybe an autoloader issue.

5

Did you load the plugin in your Application bootstrap?

6

Yes, I loaded the plugin in the Application.php file.

7

Yea, I’ve wondered about the autoloading issue. I’ve even started looking at the ObjectRegistry since that’s what’s throwing the exception, but surely this is not a framework issue. I’m even having issue debugging that. Tomorrow I was going to do a fresh install and try again. If I get the same results, I’m not really sure what else to assume.

8

I guess class_exists('CakeBootstrap\View\Helper\FormHelper') would be an easier way to check if the autoloader is working.

9

After you bake a plugin you should do (afaik bakes calls it)

composer dump-autoload
10

What is the composer command supposed to do? I ran it and it output:

Cake\Composer\Installer\PluginInstaller::postAutoloadDump

I don’t really know what to make of that.

11

The composer dump-autoload regenerate composer classlist, It make sure you can use your new baked plugin

12

Ok, so I’m still getting some errors, but I think I can work through these. I’ve made progress at least.

So what happened?

I had no idea that the plugins needed to load via composer and put in the composer file. These are plugins that we’re managing in our own repository and I didn’t realize that composer was a requirement to mange them. I noticed in the plugin documentation that information is there. I hadn’t read that until now. We’ve been working with CakePHP2 for years and version 2 didn’t work that way, so I had no idea that version 4 would work that way. Anyway, now I know. Wanted to leave this information in case anyone else runs into the same problem.

Thanks for the guidance.

13

Hi @justinkbug,

You surely do like this:

$this->loadHelper('Form', ['className' => 'CakeBootstrap.Form']);

Where CakeBootstrap is plugin name and Form is FormHelper.php class name.

But as @raul338 suggested you have to regerate your composer class list in order to use it in your application. Just run same command but add -o flag.

composer dump-autoload -o