Using blocks

View blocks are snippets of content, which are captured at runtime, and then manipulated and rendered to a view.

In this recipe, we'll look at how to extend a view, and then use view blocks to populate certain areas of it.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we'll reuse the existing controller, which is ProductsController. If you don't have it, create a file named ProductsController.php in app/Controller/, and introduce the following content:

<?php
App::uses('AppController', 'Controller');

class ProductsController extends AppController {
}

Then, we'll create a base view, which we'll extend with our view. Create a file named base.ctp in app/View/Common/, and add the following content:

<h2><?php echo h($this->fetch('name')); ?></h2>
<div>
  <?php echo $this->fetch('content'); ?>
</div>

How to do it...

Perform the following steps:

1. First, add a details() method to ProductsController with the following content:

   public function details() {
     $this-&gt...