Wow, seems like a really nice book! I cant wait to have it in my eyes!
Question: are u planing to release a PDF version? That would be cool for me...

As I understand, an e-book version will be available from Apress when the book publishes. Check out the product page at:

http://apress.com/book/view/9781430209775

Got the book preordered from Amazon, can't wait!

Hello David, yesterday I received your book. I scanned the content, it looks interesting, however I can't see there anything about caching, maybe I just don't find it, but if it is not there it is pity as caching is also very important in today web applications.

@depi

You're right, caching is important for more complex web apps. I didn't include caching in the book for a couple of reasons. First, I had to make sure all of my examples conformed to version 1.2 RC1, and I noticed some important changes to caching methods between releases. I couldn't confirm that the current state of caching in RC1 was permanent, so I would have risked the integrity of the book by including it, which I'm not totally averse to doing, but it wasn't the same as, say, how to build layouts.

Second, I was nervous about losing my audience by delving into highly technical methods. You'll notice that I gloss over ACL in the book; I wasn't about to write a "definitive" explanation of ACL methods when I can find no absolute consensus over the right protocol for using the ACL component and managing permissions. And I feared that giving my own explanation could potentially take the book from introducing Cake to beginners and novices to only making sense to advanced readers. In a lesser sense, but certainly in some measure, I had similar concerns about caching, though admittedly, caching is much less complex than ACL.

Third, and the factor that most influenced my decision to not include caching tutorials, was time. From the start, I had limited time in completing the manuscript and, frankly, felt frantic during most of the draft period. The one thing I would not compromise, as much as possible, was the quality of the text, and so I trimmed the fat, so to speak, on exactly what was essential for someone learning Cake to know, and what was ancillary. I decided that caching fit in there with shell scripting (which Cake also does marvelously well), and other useful, important, and advanced features that wasn't absolutely essential to a new Cake developer's knowledge. In other words, I couldn't justify leaving out DataSources, especially since so little is written online about them, nor Behaviors, though these are some of the more technical tutorials in the book, and other Cake classes, so they're in there.

Please forgive me if you still feel that I let you down... I'll certainly remember your feedback if (when?) I begin work on a second edition.

Thank you for you reply David.

I fully understand you, however maybe you could write at least some bonus articles here on the blog, or make a bonus PDF for first edition owners, I think it could be interesting this way too.

But now I will look around on the web to find some information about this topic.

Anyway thanks for your book!

i would really apprechiate it too.
got the book 1 week ago, and it helped me a lot lately.
right now i am testing the xml datasource - and hopefully i can combine it with some caching. so if there will be a bonus article on it, that would be great :)

actually i did find two little errors/problems a few minutes before.

Listing 14-6 (Page 250)

DS seperator to work on windows systems and just a copy&paste thing:

... .'files'.DS. ...

Line 19 [about ...->read();]

$file should here be $this->FileUtil
(has been $file in the File Example Before on Page 199ff)

/**
* Connect to datasource
* @return boolean Success
*/
function connect() {
App::import('Core','File');
$this->FileUtil =& new File(WWW_ROOT.'files'.DS.$this->config['file']);
$this->File = $this->FileUtil->read();

if (!$this->File) {
return false;
}
return true;
}

PS: i did also find out, that the "minimal configuration of a new datasource (in this case "xml_source.php")
does need ANOTHER function in order to work properly with form fields
(submit a form in a controller action that does access the xmlsource will cause the following error otherwise:

Fatal error: Call to undefined method XmlSource::boolean() in G:\xampp\htdocs\c\cake\libs\view\helpers\form.php on line 815

so this is needed:

/**
* Translates between PHP boolean values and Database (faked) boolean values
*
* @param mixed $data Value to be translated
* @return mixed Converted boolean value
*/
function boolean($data) {
if ($data = true || $data = false) {
if ($data === true) {
return 1;
}
return 0;
} else {
return !empty($data);
}
}

@mark

Thanks! Great help with this function. Writing about DataSources was perhaps the most challenging because so little has been documented about them, so I very much appreciate your catching this error and fixing it, as well as forwarding it along.

well.. but i ran into some more problems..
the datasouce does not get along well with the security component (i had to deactivate it on sites i use the xml source).
And - especially in the web (on localhost it seemed to work) - i get the "white screen of death" on any site which uses the xml datasource.
i think it is the datasource itself..
although i dont know if i started and ended it the right way:

MODEL:
function xmlRead() {
$this->setDataSource('xml');
$xml= $this->getDataSource();
$xml->connect('4.txt');
$content = $xml->findAll();
$xml->close();
return $content;
}

function xmlWrite($content) {
$this->setDataSource('xml');
$xml= $this->getDataSource();
$xml->connect('4.txt');

$content = $xml->writeToXml($content);
$xml->close();
return $content;
}

i dont understand it anyway - how it is possible not to surpress these "white screens" - as this makes it really hard to debug it.

anyway - if i take the xml-> part out of these 2 functions, the site is displayed again.
and the rights are on 0777 - so this cant be the problem either.. maybe even some cake bug.
well, i ended up writing and reading xml files through a component.

feel free to drop me a line if you are interested in some more details.
mark