Tables and configuration

Fetch plugin tables using their plugin alias, such as $this->fetchTable('Data.Countries') in a controller. The supplied classes use Tools' table base class and retain some compatibility helpers from earlier plugin versions.

Table alias	Main purpose
Data.Continents	Continent tree and country association
Data.Countries	Country names, ISO codes, phone codes, status, and timezone offsets
Data.States	Country subdivisions
Data.Cities	City records and postal-code searches
Data.PostalCodes	Postal codes and location searches
Data.Languages	Language codes, locales, fallback locales, and status
Data.Timezones	Timezone names, offsets, canonical entries, and aliases
Data.Currencies	Currency records and exchange-rate integration
Data.Addresses	Addresses attached to host records
Data.MimeTypes	MIME type and extension records
Data.MimeTypeImages	Images associated with MIME types

Counties, Districts, and Locations are legacy models. Do not start a new application with them; their tables are not created by the supplied migrations.

Country associations

When using only the country table, disable associations whose tables you have omitted. Configure this during application bootstrap, before a country table instance is created:

use Cake\Core\Configure;

Configure::write('Data.Country.Continent', false);
Configure::write('Data.Country.State', false);
Configure::write('Data.Country.Timezone', false);

The values must be the boolean false; an unset key leaves the association enabled. Disable the reverse timezone-to-country association with Data.Timezone.Country if your installation omits countries.

Language helpers

$languages = $this->fetchTable('Data.Languages');
$active = $languages->getActive()->all();
$primary = $languages->getPrimaryLanguages()->all();
$namesById = $languages->getList();
$namesByCode = $languages->codeList();

getActive() filters active rows. getPrimaryLanguages() selects rows whose locale equals their fallback locale. The list helpers filter active rows; they do not mean that every locale variant is included.

Named connections

Plugin aliases do not select a database connection automatically. Configure the table locator before creating plugin table instances if you migrated to a named connection:

use Cake\Datasource\ConnectionManager;
use Cake\ORM\TableRegistry;

$locator = TableRegistry::getTableLocator();
$locator->setConfig('Data.Countries', [
    'connection' => ConnectionManager::get('reference'),
]);

Set the connection for associated plugin tables too. All associations involved in a query or save must use compatible database connections.