How to load view from alternative directory in Laravel 4 - php

Question

In my Laravel 4 application's root directory, I have a folder themes. Inside the themes folder, I have default and azure.
How can I access view from this themes/default folder in a specific route.
Route::get('{slug}', function($slug) {
// make view from themes/default here
});
My directory structure:
-app
--themes
---default
---azure
I need to load views from localhost/laravel/app/themes/default folder. Please explain this.

Answer 1

This is entirely possible with Laravel 4. What you're after is actually the view environment.
You can register namespace hints or just extra locations that the finder will cascade too. Take a look here
You'd add a location like so:
View::addLocation('/path/to/your/views');
It might be easier if you namespace them though, just in case you have conflicting file names as your path is appended to the array so it will only cascade so far until it finds an appropriate match. Namespaced views are loaded with the double colon syntax.
View::addNamespace('theme', '/path/to/themes/views');
return View::make('theme::view.name');
You can also give addNamespace an array of view paths instead of a single path.

Answer 2

Here I am not accessing my project from public folder. Instead of this I am accessing from project root itself.
I have seen a forum discussion about Using alternative path for views here. But I am little confused about this.The discussed solution was,
You'd add a location like,
View::addLocation('/path/to/your/views');
Then add namespace for theme,
View::addNamespace('theme', '/path/to/themes/views');
Then render it,
return View::make('theme::view.name');
What will be the value for /path/to/ ?
Can I use the same project in different operating system without changing the path?
Yes, we can do this using the following,
Put the following in app/start/global.php
View::addLocation(app('path').'/themes/default');
View::addNamespace('theme', app('path').'/themes/default');
Then call view like the default way,
return View::make('page');
This will render page.php or page.blade.php file from project_directory/app/themes/defualt folder.

Answer 3

I've developed a theme package for laravel 5 with features like:
Views & Asset seperation in theme folders
Theme inheritence: Extend any theme and create Theme hierarcies
Try it here: igaster/laravel-theme

Answer 4

\View::addLocation($directory); works fine but the new right way to do it is using loadViewsFrom($path, $namespace) (available on any service provider).