String.md

String Behavior

A CakePHP behavior to apply basic string operations for your input.

Note that most string modification should be done once, on save. Prevent using output modification if possible as it is done on every fetch.

Usage

Input formatting

Include behavior in your Table class as

$this->addBehavior('Tools.String', [
    'fields' => ['title'],
    'input' => ['ucfirst'],
]);

This will ucfirst() the title prior to saving.

Tip: If you have other behaviors that might modify the array data prior to saving, better use a lower (higher value) priority:

$this->addBehavior('Tools.String', [
    ...
    'priority' => 11,
]);

The input filters are an array and therefore can also be stacked. They will be executed in the order given. If string that function is expected to exist. You can also use callables and anonymous functions, of course.

If you need to process different ones per field, use the following way to configure:

$this->addBehavior('Tools.String', [
    'fields' => [
        'title' => [
            function(string $e): string {
                return ucwords($e);
            }, function(string $e): string {
                return str_replace(' ', '', $e);
            },
        ],
    ],
]);

Output formatting

Instead of the preferred input formatting you can also modify the output (for each find):

$this->addBehavior('Tools.String', [
    ...
    'output' => ['ucfirst'],
]);

Configuration

• clean: true/false to also clean the input strings on beforeMarshal() and prio to validation.
• fields: array of fields to apply the input/output filters to.
• input: array of input filters to apply to the fields.
• output: array of output filters to apply to the fields.

When using input and "per field" input filters, the fields config is ignored.

Examples

Imagine the following config:

    'fields' => ['title', 'comment'],
    'input' => ['strtolower', 'ucwords'],

And the input:

$data = [
    'title' => 'some nAme',
    'comment' => 'myBlog',
    'url' => 'www.dereuromark.de',
];
$comment = $this->Comments->newEntity($data);
$result = $this->Comments->save($comment);

The title would be saved as Some Name and the comment as MyBlog.