MVC Architecture

MVC stands for Model-View-Controller. It's a way of organizing an application's code by splitting three separate concerns apart, instead of mixing database queries, HTML, and request-handling logic all in one file. CakePHP is built around this pattern from top to bottom.

The Pattern, in General

None of these three pieces should know too much about the others' internal details. A model shouldn't format HTML, and a view shouldn't run database queries directly.

Models: Table and Entity Classes

CakePHP splits "Model" into two related class types, both living under src/Model/:

• Table classes (src/Model/Table/) — represent an entire database table, such as ArticlesTable for the articles table. Queries, validation rules, and save logic live here.
• Entity classes (src/Model/Entity/) — represent a single row, such as one Article. They hold the data for that one record and any row-specific behavior.

Views: Templates in templates/

Views are plain PHP template files stored under templates/, organized into a folder per controller. A controller passes data to a view, and the view's only job is to render that data as HTML — no database access, no business rules.

Controllers: Handling the Request

Controllers live under src/Controller/. A controller receives the incoming request, asks the relevant model for data, decides what should happen next, and hands data off to a view to render. The next two lessons cover routing and controllers in much more depth.

Putting It Together: The Request Flow

A single request through a CakePHP application generally flows like this:

Request -> Router -> Controller -> Model (data) -> View (render) -> Response

The router decides which controller and action should handle the URL, the controller asks a model for whatever data it needs, and then a view renders that data into the final response sent back to the browser.