If a core helper (or one showcased on Cakeforge or the Bakery) doesn’t fit your needs, helpers are easy to create.

Let's say we wanted to create a helper that could be used to output a specifically crafted CSS-styled link you needed many different places in your application. In order to fit your logic in to CakePHP's existing helper structure, you'll need to create a new class in /app/views/helpers. Let's call our helper LinkHelper. The actual PHP class file would look something like this:

<?php
/* /app/views/helpers/link.php */

class LinkHelper extends AppHelper {
    function makeEdit($title, $url) {
        // Logic to create specially formatted link goes here...
    }
}

?>

1. <?php
2. /* /app/views/helpers/link.php */
3. class LinkHelper extends AppHelper {
4. function makeEdit($title, $url) {
5. // Logic to create specially formatted link goes here...
6. }
7. }
8. ?>

There are a few methods included in CakePHP's Helper class you might want to take advantage of:

output(string $string)

Use this function to hand any data back to your view.

<?php
function makeEdit($title, $url) {
    // Use the helper's output function to hand formatted
    // data back to the view:
    return $this->output(
        "<div class=\"editOuter\">
         <a href=\"$url\" class=\"edit\">$title</a>

         </div>"
    );
}
?>

1. <?php
2. function makeEdit($title, $url) {
3. // Use the helper's output function to hand formatted
4. // data back to the view:
5. return $this->output(
6. "<div class=\"editOuter\">
7. <a href=\"$url\" class=\"edit\">$title</a>
8. </div>"
9. );
10. }
11. ?>