Copula is a CakePHP plugin for talking to remote APIs, using them as a datasource. This helps you separate your code cleanly as per CakePHP conventions. It also includes some useful features for parsing CSV, XML, and JSON responses. There's also code for OAuth Authentication because it's required for many APIs.
This plugin is not currently in a useable state and hasn't been updated in a while. I have been actively developing this though and I should have an updated version out shortly. -PL Feb 2015