Is it possible to create a plugin inside a plugin with CakePHP3? - cakephp-3.0

Question

I would like to create a plugin inside a plugin with Cakephp3. I found a solution for Cakephp2 but it doesn't seem to work in Cakephp3:
Is it possible to create a plugin inside a plugin with CakePHP?
How can I do this in Cakephp3?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume your question regards having the plugin loaded in your CakePHP 3.x application, not creating the plugin :-)
Note: this answer assumes you installed Cake using composer.
As an example, let's say we wanted to create a plugin, Themes, and this plugin was going to contain other plugins, Blue and Red.
By convention, the Themes plugin should be contained in your_app/plugins/Themes and the Blue and Red plugins could be contained in your_app/plugins/Themes/plugins/Blue and your_app/plugins/Themes/plugins/Red respectively.
In your_app/config/bootstrap.php , add the following:
Plugin::load('Themes', ['bootstrap' => true]);
(See https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/plugins.html#plugin-configuration for info regarding plugin configuration)
The code above tells Cake to load the Themes plugin, and to look for and load the plugin's bootstrap file.
If you haven't already done so, create the Themes plugin's bootstrap file at your_app/plugins/Themes/config/bootstrap.php and have it looking similar to:
<?php
use Cake\Core\Plugin;
// load the red and blue child plugins
Plugin::load('Themes/plugins/Red');
Plugin::load('Themes/plugins/Blue');
Important: Since you're trying to write the plugin(s) manually and not installing via composer, you need to modify your_app/composer.json to contain something like:
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"App\\": "src",
"Red\\": "./plugins/Themes/plugins/Red/src",
"Blue\\": "./plugins/Themes/plugins/Blue/src"
}
}
(See https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/plugins.html#autoloading-plugin-classes for more info on autoloading plugin classes).
Now, from within your_app/ run:
php composer.phar dumpautoload
(or the equivalent command, depending on how composer was installed on your machine)
This tells composer to refresh its autoloading cache. If you were to inspect your_app/vendor/cakephp-plugins.php, you should see that a path to the Themes plugin's folder has been added to a pre-existing list of plugin paths.
Now, from within your app's main controllers, you should be able to have stuff like:
public function initialize()
{
// load (supposedly-existing) components from the "Red" or "Blue" themes
// load GradientComponent of the "Red" theme
$this->loadComponent('Red.Gradient');
// load ColorComponent of the "Blue" theme
$this->loadComponent('Blue.Color');
// use what you asked for...
$this->Color->someMethod(['data']);
parent::initialize();
}
Also, to use view files (that you'd expect theme plugins to provide :-) ):
public function beforeRender(Event $event)
{
// use the "home" layout from the Red theme
$this->viewBuilder()->setLayout('Themes/plugins/Red.home');
parent::beforeRender($event);
}