View #git

Since the PHP language is already capable of working as a template engine itself and contains useful keywords (such as if/endif, for/endfor etc.) just like template engines use, Froq! doesn't bring or use any exotic template stuff (like blade, sharp, lord of the templates etc.) that makes these template files simply complicated, but provides a dead-simple view interface for rendering PHP files to HTML outputs.

To use this feature, view options in config file must be provided and in each controller that'll use a view file must have $useView property as true (default false, so for saving some OS resource & thinking that 99% of an API controllers won't use a view, just like a session).

View options

layout: to echo all rendered view file content into (required).
base: to put all view files into, otherwise each view file will be addressed in app/system/<Name-Of-Controller>/view/<name-of-file>.php (optional).

Note: To echo the rendered content into layout file can only be done $CONTENT variable, and this variable name must not be used when sending data to the view file calling $this->view() or $this->view->setData() methods.

As an example, this site's view config is like;

'view' => [
    'layout' => APP_DIR . '/app/system/view/layout.php',
    'base'   => APP_DIR . '/app/system/view'
]

And layout file is like;

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    ...
</head>
<body>
    <div class="head wrap">
        ...
    </div>
    <div class="body wrap">
        <div class="main">
            <div><?= $CONTENT ?></div>
        </div><!-- .main -->

        <div class="side">
            ...
        </div><!-- .side -->
    </div>
    <div class="foot wrap">
        ...
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Rendering view files

To render a view file can be done using a controller's view() method, optionally $data and $status arguments, but also froq\app\View::render() method can be used directly with $file and $fileData arguments.

// File: app/controller/UserController.php
class UserController extends Controller {
    public bool $useSession = true;
    public bool $useView = true;

    public function loginAction() {
        if ($this->request->isPost()) {
            // ...

            if ($loginIsNotOkay) {
                // Set login error.
                $this->flash('loginFailed', true);

                return $this->redirect('/login');
            }
        }

        // Get login error (if exists).
        $loginFailed = $this->flash('loginFailed');

        return $this->view('login', ['loginFailed' => $loginFailed]);
    }
}

<!-- File: app/system/view/login.php -->
<?php if ($loginFailed): ?>
    <div class="error">Invalid login.</div>
<?php endif ?>

Data methods

Although all data can be sent at the calltime of view() method, it can also be done setData() method. And getting a data field is done by getData() method.

// Send data to a view file.
$this->view(file: a_file_name, data: an_assoc_array|null, status: a_valid_http_status|null);

// Verbosive way of setting view data.
$this->view->setData('key', $value);

// Get a data field.
$value = $this->view->getData('key', default: null);

Layout methods

To change the layout file per controller or action, you can use setLayout() method.

$this->view->setLayout('path/to/layout.php');

$layout = $this->view->getLayout();