Get yourself a new home (alternative to home.ctp)

I’m sure you know that to modify your application’s homepage, one needs to edit/create the home.ctp file in app/views/pages/home.ctp.
That, however, leaves you dealing with a more or less static page…

One common option to add some other functionality to your otherwise static pages is to copy the Pages Controller from the core into your app, and make some required modifications.

On the other hand, you don’t have to be stuck with home.ctp as your default main page. All you need to do is simply designate a new root (/) route.

Let’s look at an example…

I have a Markets Controller (markets_controller.php), which has a nice action called summary(). It pulls data from various Market model methods and utilizes some features of the App Controller.
All of that is working quite nicely and in reality I’d prefer that page (summary) to be my new “home”.

So, rather than dealing with Pages Controller hackery, I simply replace the default route (in app/config/routes.php) with:

Router::connect('/', array('controller' => 'markets', 'action' => 'summary'));

That’s it, now I’ve got a new fully dynamic homepage without any pain whatsoever.