How does CakePHP know not to run initialize() on any given controller?

alex · February 12, 2025, 3:51pm

Hi everyone

Just curious, how does CakePHP understand that public function initialize() {} is not to be executed on a controller? Just tried to visit /example/initialize and got Missing Method in ExampleController. Is there a list of reserved method names somewhere in the core?

alex · February 12, 2025, 4:10pm

Found it!

https://api.cakephp.org/5.0/class-Cake.Controller.Controller.html#isAction()

The default implementation disallows access to all methods defined on Cake\Controller\Controller and allows all public methods on all subclasses of this class.

github.com/cakephp/cakephp

src/Controller/Controller.php

18253daa0


      
          /**
           * Method to check that an action is accessible from a URL.
           *
           * Override this method to change which controller methods can be reached.
           * The default implementation disallows access to all methods defined on Cake\Controller\Controller,
           * and allows all public methods on all subclasses of this class.
           *
           * @param string $action The action to check.
           * @return bool Whether the method is accessible from a URL.
           */
          public function isAction(string $action): bool
          {
              if (method_exists(self::class, $action)) {
                  return false;
              }
          
              try {
                  $method = new ReflectionMethod($this, $action);
              } catch (ReflectionException) {
                  return false;
              }

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How does CakePHP know not to run initialize() on any given controller?

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How does CakePHP know not to run initialize() on any given controller?

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