CodeIgniter Initial Page Load Variable? - php

Question

I'm looking for a solution to loading the header/footer/navigation only on the initial page view.
The reasoning behind this is that my navigation panel uses Ajax to render the content of the destination link in the main content div instead of actually loading the page itself.
However, I need to be able to say something along the lines of if its the initial view, load the header, navigation, then the actual page, then the footer. But if its not the initial view and the page is loaded in the content div area so for example a navigation link or a form submit, it doesn't load the header, navigation and footer but only the actual page.
So for example I have these 4 views:
header_view
navigation_view
page_a_view
footer_view
And this controller:
controller_a
The navigation has a link which is 'Page A' and points to http://myurl.com/controller_a. If that link is clicked I only wanted controller_a to load the page_a_view view, because the navigation link will load the data of that page into the div.
However if I directly go to http://myurl.com/controller_a, it needs to render the the header/navigation/footer also.
The solution I thought I was on the right lines with was something like a base controller with a function load_page() which would be something like:
function load_page($page, $data) {
if($this->uri->segment($this->uri->total_segments()) == "initial_page_load") {
$this->load->view('header_view');
$this->load->view('navigation_view');
$this->load->view($page, $data);
$this->load->view('footer_view');
} else {
$this->load->view($page, $data);
}
}
So if I was to go to http://myurl.com/controller_a/initial_page_load it would load the header/navigation/footer but if I went to http://myurl.com/controller_a it wouldn't.
However this doesn't cover all possibilities.
Another way I thought of is checking if there is a referring URL, if there is, don't load the header/navigation/footer. But again, this doesn't cover things such as what if the link was referred by an external website?
Does anyone have any suggestions to how I can achieve what I need?

Answer 1

Let this be your view page for all views. For your other pages, you are going to change the content on div, 'page_content' dynamically via ajax.
**application/views/your_template_view.php**
<?php
$this->load->view('header_view');
$this->load->view('navigation_view');
?>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" id='home' class='my_links'>Home</a>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" id='about_us' class='my_links'>About us</a>
<!--
Make sure the id of the page is same as
the file name of view page for respective pages
-->
<div id='page_content'><?php echo $page_content; ?></div>
<?php
$this->load->view('footer_view');
?>
<script lang='javascript'>
$('.my_links').click(function(){
$.post(
'<?php echo site_url('test_controller/get_page_content') ?>',
{'page_content':$(this).attr('id')},
function(response){
if(response != '')
$('#page_content').text(response);
},'json'
);
});
</script>
Let this be your controller :
**application/controller/test_controller.php**
function your_page($param1 = '', $param2 ='') {
/*this one is for your initial page*/
if($param1)
// send mail
if($param2)
// send mail
$data['page_content'] = $this->load->view('initial_page_load');
$this->load->view('your_template_view', $data);
}
function get_page_content()
{
/*this one is for other pages, this provides page content
for the request made from ajax*/
$page_title = $this->input->post('page_title');
$page_content = $this->load->view($page_title);
echo json_encode($page_content);
}

Answer 2

Make a session variable to denote whether the header/footer is loaded, and if it is, just skip them
if (!$this->session->userdata('nav_loaded')) {
$this->load->view('header_view');
}
etc...
This will work for all your pages, no matter where are they called from, provided that all the post-initial calls are done by AJAX.
EDIT
If you want to mix ajax and non-ajax calls after that, the session varable won't work, of course. Perhaps you could put an ajax parameter in your urls and adjust the controllers according to that.
public function index($ajax = false) {
...
if (!ajax) {
$this->load->view('header_view');
}
etc...
}
So, all the AJAX call will have that additional parameter in the url set to true (almost anything except zero: index/1, index/ajax, etc.).

Answer 3

Although I'm still testing this it seems to be doing exactly what I expect so far! It's one of those ones which is simple but does the complete job so hopefully no problems pop up...
In MY_Controller.php
function load_page($page, $data) {
if(!$this->input->is_ajax_request()) {
$this->load->view('header_view');
$this->load->view('navigation_view');
}
$this->load->view($page, $data);
if(!$this->input->is_ajax_request()) {
$this->load->view('footer_view');
}
}
Managed to stumble across that function when looking in the Input class documentation