Difference between "component" and "plugin" in cakephp 2.1?

Question

What is the difference between a "plugin" and a "component" in cakephp? I have some things that I thought were components because they were loaded with

var $components = array(...); 

but now that I have upgraded to cakephp 2.1 (from 1.3), I was told that these are, in fact, “plugins” with a useless error message. Are components just another name for plugins ... or something else?

Answer 1

Components and plugins are still separate objects in Cake 2.0. According to the manual, components are “logic packages that are shared between controllers,” while plugins are “a combination of controllers, models, and views.” Components extend the base class Component, while plugins have their own AppModel and AppController.

Think of the plugin as a standalone Cake application sharing the same core libraries with your main application.

In addition, in Cake 2.0, components are handled a little differently from 1.3 (they must have a component in the file name, so SessionComponent.php instead of session.php , for example), and some functions have been removed. For example, EmailComponent completely out of date.

The error messages you receive may relate to third-party components. Which of them do you dislike?