This is still a work in progress

This Twig plugin replaces the CakePHP2 view renderer with conventions more familiar to Symfony2. I've taken some liberties, such as PHP 5.3 only, namespaces, and autoloading for the plugin's classes.

The plugin provides a custom set of classes such as TemplateNameParser and TemplateReference to parse and reference views. The FileSystemLoader class is also helpful in locating view templates.

Instead of relying on 2-pass rendering, Twig plugin relies on the powerful extends tag of the Twig templating library.

Lastly, the plugin provides a console to find all .twig templates in an effort to cache file paths and reduce filesystem lookups. The goal is to make template rendering faster.

@todo - Provide application vendor installation instructions using composer.

CakePHP 2 plugin supports Composer and Packagist. Download composer.phar and put it in your path.

From the app/Plugin folder run the following:

git clone https://github.com/paulredmond/cakephp-twig.git Twig
cd ./Twig
php composer.phar install

Boostrap the plugin in app/Config/bootstrap.php:

<?php

CakePlugin::load('Twig', array('bootstrap' => true));

Note: You must bootstrap this plugin.

Configure the application Controller::$view property:

<?php

// Preferably in AppController.php - Application-wide Twig views.

public $viewClass = 'Twig.Twig';

Twig caches templates, therefore, you need to add this folder and give apache write permissions for this path:

cd path/to/app
mkdir -p tmp/twig/cache

Additionally, you can configure the path in app/Config/core.php if you'd like:

<?php

if (!defined('TWIG_CACHE_PATH')) {
    define('TWIG_CACHE_PATH', '/path/to/twig/cache');
}

Templates can now extend views and layouts more elegantly using extends and block:

{% extends 'App:Layouts:default.html.twig' %}

{% block content %}
Hi {{ name }}! This is the content of your view.
{% endblock %}

Also use Symfony2-like syntax in controllers:

<?php

// ...Controller method

return $this->render(':Articles:index.html.twig'); // Matches App/View/Articles/index.html.twig

You can still you CakePHP helpers directly, but you have to either a) disable auto-escaping in the configuration, or b) use Twig's built-in |raw filter for helpers that produce HTML output:

{{ _view.Html.link('test', '/')|raw }}

Familiarize yourself with Twig's extension API, and specifically Creating an Extension. You can also view pre-installed extensions that come with this plugin at Lib/TwigPlugin/Extension in this project for a few examples.

You can add extensions in core.php like so:

<?php

Configure::write('twig.extensions', array(
    'NameSpace\Of\Autoloaded\Class', // Autoloaded class
    new MyExtension(), // Instance
));

Note: You are responsible for autoloading exentions or creating an instance. This might change in the future, as CakePHP 2.1 does provide an Event layer.

This plugin provides template extensions for commonly used view layer functions.

@ todo - move the following section to the docs.

Wraps HtmlHelper::link() method:

{{ link('Link Text', '/', {'class': 'my-link'}) }}

Only return a link if not the current url with link_unless_current:

{{ link_unless_current('Link Text', '/', {'class': 'my-link'}) }}

This is a stub, provide link to full template API