beforeFilter() in the appController

If the beforeFilter() in the appController seems to not be executed, this could be because you have another beforeFilter() in one of the controllers.
If you need to use beforeFilter() in the appController in your CakePHP application, it won’t be called if you also use a beforeFilter() in the children controllers. You have to call it using parent::beforeFilter() from the children.
function beforeFilter() {
    parent::beforeFilter(); // This will call the appController beforeFilter()
    …
}