CakePHP 3.5: What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in CakePHP 3.5

CakePHP 3.5 introduces several new features, improvements, and deprecations to streamline development and modernize the framework's core. This release focuses on enhancing the ORM, improving request/response handling, and preparing for future versions. Below is a summary of the key changes.

How does PSR-7 support change request handling?

CakePHP 3.5 adds experimental support for PSR-7 (psr/http-message), allowing you to work with standardized HTTP message interfaces. This is a foundational step for the middleware system. In practice, you can now type-hint Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface in controllers.

The existing Cake\Http\ServerRequest and Cake\Http\Response objects implement these interfaces, so your current code keeps working. This matters because it opens the door to using a wider ecosystem of PSR-7 compatible middleware.

MiddlewareStack

A new MiddlewareStack class provides a more structured way to apply middleware to your application. It replaces the older $middleware queue approach in Application. You now use addMiddleware() in your app's bootstrap() method.

// In src/Application.php
public function middleware($middleware)
{
    // Old 3.4 way - deprecated
    $middleware->add(new CustomMiddleware());
}

public function middleware($middlewareQueue)
{
    // New 3.5 way
    $middlewareQueue->addMiddleware(new CustomMiddleware());
}

What ORM finder methods were added?

The ORM gets new finder methods like find('list') and find('threaded') which can now be used directly on Table classes, not just Query objects. This makes code more concise and readable.

// Works in 3.5
$articles = $this->Articles->find('list');

// Instead of the longer 3.4 style
$articles = $this->Articles->find('list')->all();

Lazy Loading Associations

You can now lazy-load associations using the loadInto() method on entities. This is handy when you have an entity and need to fetch related data without rebuilding a query.

$article = $this->Articles->get($id);
$this->Articles->loadInto($article, ['Authors', 'Comments']);
// $article->author and $article->comments are now populated.

Which parts are deprecated in 3.5?

Several components are marked for removal in CakePHP 4.0. The deprecation warnings help you prepare your codebase. Major deprecations include the standalone use of Controller Components and Helpers.

Components and Helpers must now be defined as services in your controller's initialize() method using loadComponent() and loadHelper(). The old property declarations no longer work.

// Deprecated in 3.5
class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public $components = ['Flash'];
    public $helpers = ['Form'];
}

// Correct way in 3.5
class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public function initialize()
    {
        parent::initialize();
        $this->loadComponent('Flash');
        $this->loadHelper('Form');
    }
}

Methods in Cake\Http\ServerRequest and Cake\Http\Response related to array access (like offsetGet()) are also deprecated. Use the object's property or method equivalents instead.

How is pagination simplified?

The PaginatorComponent is simpler. The paginate() method now returns a ResultSetInterface directly, not a Query object. This means you don't need to call all() afterward.

// 3.5 - returns a ResultSet
$articles = $this->Paginator->paginate($query);

// 3.4 - returned a Query object
$articles = $this->Paginator->paginate($query)->all();

This change reduces boilerplate and aligns with how other finder methods work. The Controller::$paginate property and paginateModel option are deprecated in favor of passing all configuration to the paginate() method.