Laravel: Passing default variables to view - php

Question

In Laravel, we all pass data to our view in pretty much the same way
$data = array(
'thundercats' => 'Hoooooooooooh!'
);
return View::make('myawesomeview', $data);
But is there some way to add default variables to the view without having to declare it over and over in $data? This would be very helpful for repeating variables such as usernames, PHP logic, and even CSS styles if the site demands it.

Answer 1

Use View Composers
View composers are callbacks or class methods that are called when a
view is created. If you have data that you want bound to a given view
each time that view is created throughout your application, a view
composer can organize that code into a single location. Therefore,
view composers may function like "view models" or "presenters".
Defining A View Composer :
View::composer('profile', function($view)
{
$view->with('count', User::count());
});
Now each time the profile view is created, the count data will be bound to the view. In your case, it could be for id :
View::composer('myawesomeview', function($view)
{
$view->with('id', 'someId');
});
So the $id will be available to your myawesomeview view each time you create the view using :
View::make('myawesomeview', $data);
You may also attach a view composer to multiple views at once:
View::composer(array('profile','dashboard'), function($view)
{
$view->with('count', User::count());
});
If you would rather use a class based composer, which will provide the benefits of being resolved through the application IoC Container, you may do so:
View::composer('profile', 'ProfileComposer');
A view composer class should be defined like so:
class ProfileComposer {
public function compose($view)
{
$view->with('count', User::count());
}
}
Documentation and you can read this article too.

Answer 2

There are couple of ways, so far I have been experiment with some.
1.Use singleton, you can put it in routes.php
App::singleton('blog_tags', function() {
return array(
'Drupal' => 'success',
'Laravel' => 'danger',
'Symfony' => 'dark',
'Wordpress' => 'info'
);
});
2.Use Settings bundle, download here. https://github.com/Phil-F/Setting. You can put this in controller or template.
Setting::set('title', 'Scheduler | Mathnasium');
3.Use View share, pretty much use it in your template
Controller: Views::share('theme_path', 'views/admin/');
Template: <link href="{{ $theme_path }}/assets/bootstrap.min.css"/>
4.My current sample setup, I wrote a construct in HomeController.
public function __construct()
{
// Define a theme namespace folder under public
View::addLocation('../public/views/admin');
View::addNamespace('admin', '../public/views/admin');
View::share('theme_path', 'views/admin/');
// Set default page title
Setting::set('title', 'Scheduler | Mathnasium');
Setting::set('description', 'daily customer scheduler.');
Setting::set('keywords', ['Reservation', 'Planner']);
Setting::set('page-title', '');
}

Answer 3

#enchance, as an alternative to using '*', as mentioned in your comment, perhaps a View::share would help you too. From the Laravel documentation:
You may also share a piece of data across all views:
View::share('name', 'Steve');
Excerpt is from http://laravel.com/docs/responses

Answer 4

Yep there absolutely is a way - see here on view composers.
You can use that to add data to a view or set of views.