There is a ton of information that CakePHP sets up for each request. Looking at the Controller object API, you can see that a sizable chunk is devoted to maintaining the data about the current request (as it should be) but what, if anything, are you doing with that information? Here's some tidbits I've ran into while developing a plugin that you can use to start "leaning on CakePHP" in your application.
I'm sure you've been there before. Cleaning up data in every conceivable way that the user could muddle it up just so you can get the information saved or updated. Trimming whitespace, stripping HTML, parsing formatting languages, etc. The problem is that, while necessary, this sucks.
Here's a quick little tidbit which while may be obvious to more seasoned coders, will really help out your database and make your model code more robust.
Ever find yourself in a situation where CakePHP executes a handful of database queries but the controller immediately redirects you, effectively throwing away the log of everything that happened during that request? What about trying to see "behind the scenes" of an AJAX request? Well, here's a little tidbit to help sneak a peak under the hood..
You know what's a really fun and easy way to bog down someone's server? Make a request against a controller for hundreds of thousands of records. Here's how to keep that from happening in your applications.
While usually pretty rare there are times when you want to define an association for a model that relates back to itself; parent record, children records, etc. Here's an example of how to get this up and running in your own model.
