Including view file in codeigniter - php

Question

I am a newbie in Codeigniter. I am doing a project in which in every pages, I would like to include a drop down for showing multi-languages. For this, I am including a view file in one of the view file in another controller as:
<?php $this->load->view('language/alllang');?>
In alllang.php, I would like to include the code for displaying drop down. For this I have created a controller LanguageController with the following code:
<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class Language extends CI_Controller
{
function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url'));
$this->load->library('form_validation');
}
function alllang()
{
$data['val']="hhh"; // for testing
$this->load->view('alllang',$data);
exit;
}
}
Code for alllang.php is:
<?php
echo $val;
?>
But I am getting an error like this:
A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: Notice
Message: Undefined variable: val
Filename: language/alllang.php
Line Number: 2
This code is only for testing purpose (not the code for multilanguage). How can I set the value to be included in view file from controller.

Answer 1

Edited for database access functionality:
You could just create a library file and save it in application/libraries, call it "language_lib.php":
<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class Language_lib{
function __construct(){
$this->CI =& get_instance();
}
function lang_dropdown(){
//db queries:
$q = $this->CI->db->select('*')->from('table')->get()->result_array();
$html = … //your dropdown code here using $q
return $html;
}
}
Next, in application/config/autoload.php:
$autoload['libraries'] = array('language_lib');
Now in each controller method that needs the drop down, e.g. the index method:
function index(){
$data['dropdown'] = $this->language_lib->lang_dropdown();
$this->load->view('some_view', $data);
}
You can access this in the view with <?php echo $dropdown; ?>

Answer 2

Your explanation is a bit confusing, but by doing this
$this->load->view('language/alllang');
You're not calling a controller, you're calling a view only, without passing any data. If I get it right, you have a parent view, then inside it you'd like to call a language drop down view? Well, in this case a drop down view should be called with data array, and data should be coming from controller calling a parent view. Does it make sense?