Auto Populate a Form with CakePHP

Using CakePHP to auto-populate forms is a great way to save your time when developing your applications. Here is an example of some code that isn’t going to auto-populate the form in my view file.

  public function edit() {
    
    if ( !empty($this->data) ) {
      
      $this->User->save($this->data);
      $this->User->Profile->save($this->data);
      //... flash and redirect ...
      
    } else {
      $profile = $this->Session->read("User");
      $this->set("profile", $profile);
    }
    
  }

Just one line will allow the edit.ctp (the view corresponding to the edit action in my controller) form be to auto-populated! Let me share it with you.

Simply add $this->data = $profile; right after the $profile variable is defined.

The $form helper looks in the controller’s $this->data to populate the form in edit.ctp. In your own code, all you have to do is set $this->data to equal to the data you want to auto-populate. It could be a database result or a static array. It’s up to you.

It’s really quite simple when you think about it. It would have been so agonizing to have to fill everything in manually.

Happy baking.