I have Yii template that structure is:
Include CSS files in
echo $content right after
Include Javascript files (like JQPlot) after $content
What I would like to do is add custom mix of Javascript/PHP code after including all Javascript files. I know this can be done just adding the code to the template.
But I have many pages with custom JS/PHP code and I would like to include only the specific code for that page to avoid long load times.
Can I create new element that works like $content, but it would include for example "js.php" from the same View folder as "index.php"? The "js.php" would be in every view folder I need custom code and contain the js/php mix of code for that specific page.
Thanks for the help!
Clips are your best bet, as #jfrej suggests by pointing you to a forum topic where clips are discussed.
Under conventional circumstances, every controller has associated a folder where all its views are placed, and it is the case that you want to include at the end of the layout (this is how they are refered, rather than templates) some PHP+Javascript content that is common to all the actions in the controller.
I would override CController::afterRender() method to capture the content for you clip; lets call your clip controller_content:
afterRender(string $view, string &$output)
$this->beginClip('controller_content');
// output here any content you want to capture into your clip
// e.g. renderPartial, echo, etc.
...
$this->endClip();
parent::afterRender($view, $output);
}
Then, in your layout, you would render your clip after all the stuff that is always there, e.g.:
// register your CSSs
// output $content variable
// register Javascript
...
<?= $this->clips['controller_content'] ?>
Of course, there are various ways for you to generate your clip content. Here I overrode the CController::afterRender() method, but you could also use filters, behaviors or any other approach that best suits your needs.
You can try :
Yii::app()->clientScript->registerCssFile(Yii::app()->baseUrl.'/css/example.css');
Yii::app()->clientScript->registerScriptFile(Yii::app()->baseUrl.'/css/example.js');
You can call it from controller
Related
I am using zend framework.
My structure is (only included files and folders needed for this question):
application
>configs
>controllers
>forms
>images
>layouts
>scripts
>layout.phtml
>models
>styles
>style.css
>views
>scripts
>index
>index.phtml
Bootstrap.php
docs
library
logs
public
test
I have got the layout working properly. However, I want to ask a couple of questions in order to get my set up perfect for the way I want it.
Is application>styles a good place for the stylesheet to be? If not what's the recommended?
How do i add the stylesheet to the layout?
In my layout I have a title tag : <title>Text</title>. How do I pass values from my controllers to it?
Stylesheets need to be accessible from the browser, so typically you will put these somewhere in the public directory, such as public/css
There are several ways, including placing rel tags in your view/layout, but my preferred option is to use the viewHelper within your controller:
$this->view->headLink()->setStylesheet('/css/style.css');
Then your call to headLink() in the layout file will automatically include the stylesheet.
The way I have done this is to use the Zend_Registry in the past. There may be better ways.
One of my view file in cake is getting very long, like 300+ lines already. And i find it very difficult to keep track of the understanding.
Is it a good idea to split them up into smaller files and then including them in the parent view file?
If its ok to be done,
In what extension should i create the smaller files? .ctp or .php?
Including them with require_once(view-child1.ext) should be fine, right?
Im fairly new to cakePHP. So i prefer advises from the experts over here. Please put me in the right direction.
EDIT
Thanks for the help guys.
I tried it. But i cant seem to pass the variable. echo $this->Element('reviews/view-goal',$history); Parent view shows and error saying undefined variable in that element.
Im calling the elements from this loop:
foreach($histories as $date => $history)
Cant pass $history. But $histories is being passed correctly.
You should make elements in View/Elements folder with .ctp extension.
This link would help you to make clean separation of your view files with the related/repeated code.
An element is basically a mini-view that can be included in other views, in layouts, and even within other elements. Elements can be used to make a view more readable, placing the rendering of repeating elements in its own file. They can also help you re-use content fragments in your application.
Elements live in the /app/View/Elements/ folder, and have the .ctp filename extension. They are output using the element method of the view:
<?php echo $this->element('helpbox'); //without extension ?>
You can pass variables from your view to the element.
In your view:
<?php echo $this->Element('reviews/view-goal', array('history' => $history));
In view-goal.ctp element you can directly access $history variable.
Yes, it is a very good idea. But don't use the normal require() of PHP.
CakePHP has a feature called "elements", a mechanism to put parts of a view into separate .ctp files. The files go in a special folder, View/Elements
You can include an element like this:
echo $this->element('sidebar/recent_comments');
If you need any variables inside the element, you need to pass them in an additional array parameter:
echo $this->element('sidebar/recent_comments', array('variable_name' => /* Variable content */));
In order to keep your view files small, you should also make sure that you put stuff that is shared by most pages (header, footer) into the Layout file. And obviously: keep JS and CSS in external files.
Whenever I start a new project I find myself remaking and rethinking my self made template library. I use some influences from dom manipulation, but don't want to make too much functions so that it still loads fast.
This is how my current template system looks like:
This is a layout file:
<body>
<div id="content">
<block:content>This is a default text</block:content>
</div>
<div id="sidebar">
<widget:advertisement type="wide" />
<block:sidebar this_param="is_passed_on" />
</div>
</body>
As you can see I made 2 sort of "extra" tags that will be replaced when eventually publishing the template. I load this layout like this:
$this->template->load("layout");
I then can manipulate the block tags like this:
$this->template->content = "I'm overwriting the default text";
$this->template->content->prepend("I forgot something");
$this->template->sidebar->view("viewfile_1", array(/*data*/));
$this->template->sidebar->view("viewfile_2", array(/*data*/));
I can set text manually, I can load multiple views into 1 block, I can use a few dom-like manipulating functions like prepend, append, ...
I can even extend the template with more layout options like:
$this->template->content->extend("2columns");
This layout file might look like:
<div><block:left/></div>
<div><block:right/></div>
So that instead of the content block I now have an extra left and right block to put content in.
I have also created a widget tag that loads the specific widget class (/widgets/advertisement in this case). The optional parameters added in the tags are passed on to the views files and/or widget display function together with the direct passed data array.
In short, this is how my system now works. I haven't really found other systems like this to get inspiration from. Could you guys give me advice on anything so I can put together one decent system that I can keep using?
My approach is:
Create main layouts for each page type on a layouts/ folder (think Wordpress layouts for home, archive, single post, single page)
Create common bits of interface in a common/ folder (think header, footer, sidebar, widget_XX, widget_YY)
Use Phil Sturgeon's Template Library (or Spark!) to handle the views.
On each controller I load all the data needed for rendering in $this->data and I pass that object to the view
Hope this helps! Good luck.
I have a navigation menu inside a CakePHP element file (views/elements/nav_default.ctp).
The file is included inside another element that is the header (views/elements/header_default.ctp) which is then included in the layout file (views/layouts/default.ctp).
I am trying to tell Cake to load a js file (webroot/js/mega_drop.js) from within the nav element like so:
<?php
$this->addScript('mega_drop');
?>
It does not get included. I looked at the documentation for addScript which just says:
Adds content to the internal scripts
buffer. This buffer is made available
in the layout as $scripts_for_layout.
This method is helpful when creating
helpers that need to add javascript or
css directly to the layout. Keep in
mind that scripts added from the
layout, or elements in the layout will
not be added to $scripts_for_layout.
This method is most often used from
inside helpers, like the Javascript
and Html Helpers.
The key part:
Keep in mind that scripts added from the layout, or elements in the layout will not be added to $scripts_for_layout.
So how do I do it then?
I guess I could add a <script src="/js/mega_drop.js"></script> to the default.ctp layout. That doesn't feel right though as it would tightly tie the layout and the element together.
Whats the CakePHP best practice way to do this?
addScript() does not load a file; it adds actual code to the $scripts_for_layout variable. The idea being that the layout is a good, common place to load your JavaScript files and code. That way you can output all the code in one location - in the head block or at the end - either way it's together. So if you are in a situation where you've got JavaScript code in the view, rather than output it inline, you can pass it up to the layout.
The best way to load a script file is with the HTML Helper- echo $this->Html->script("script or array('of', 'scripts')"); With that in mind, you could $this->set('scripts', 'mega_drop'); in the element and then call the Html Helper with that $scripts variable from the layout.
The problem with that: it won't work if your nav_default.ctp is called from the layout. $this->set() works inside of a view (or an element called from a view) because the View is rendered before the Layout. If you are calling your element from the layout, then it is too late to be setting viewVars for use in the layout. The best thing to do is set() the scripts variable from the Controller and use a if(isset($scripts)) { echo $this->Html->script($scripts); } in the layout.
Correct and valid 1.3.x CakePHP 2.0 Dev is from example.ctp file:
$this->addScript($this->Javascript->link('tab_enabler'));
$this->addScript($this->Html->css('jquery.tabs'));
This is an example of how to properly include CSS and JS files from the view and adding in the variable $scripts_for_layout to not generate validation error with the W3C as it is not correct to add the link to a css file in <BODY></BODY>
try
$this->Html->script('mega_drop', $inline=false);
in your element without the echo.
The Second parameter says to add it to the $scripts_for_layout variable.
You should be able to do this in your element, so that the javascript is only included when the element is.
So I had a question on general organization of code for the Zend framework with regard to the layout.
My layout is basically this:
(LAYOUT.PHTML)
<div id='header'>
<?= $this->Layout()->header ?>
</div>
<div id='main'>
<?= $this->Layout()->main ?>
</div>
<div id='footer'>
<?= $this->Layout()->footer ?>
</div>
and so on and so forth. Now, in order to keep my code in my header separate from the code of my main and the code of my footer, I've created a folder for my view that holds header.phtml, main.phtml, footer.phtml. I then use this code to assign the content of header.phtml into $this->layout()->header:
(INDEX.PHTML)
$this->Layout()->header = file_get_contents('index/header.phtml');
$this->Layout()->main = file_get_contents('index/main.phtml');
$this->Layout()->footer = file_get_contents('index/footer.phtml');
That was working great, but I've hit a point where I don't want main to be static HTML anymore. I would like to be able to insert some values with PHP. So in my Controller in indexAction, I want to be able to load from my database and put values into index/main.phtml. Is there a way to do this without restructuring my site?
If not is there a way to do it so that I can have:
The ability to put code into different sections of my layout, such as Layout()->header, Layout->footer.
Separate these pieces into different files, so that they're easy to find and organize, like my index/footer.phtml, index/main.phtml etc.
Not have to put that code into quotes unnecessarily to turn it into a string to pass it to Layout()->header etc.
Thank you guys so much for your help.
-Ethan
Here is an idea:
Assign layout()->header the filename instead of the contents.
Put your code in this file
In your layout file, include() or require() the layout->header().
Since your layout headers/footers are now parsed, you can use them just like a view.
The ->header in $this->layout()->header is response segment. You can render parts of response using $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setResponseSegment('header'); in an action.
If you use
$this->layout()->header = $this->render('index/header.phtml');
It will even use the view, therefore keeping all your variables defined when rendering the header.
I would suggest using something like
<?php echo ($header = $this->layout()->header)?
$header : $this->render('headerDefault.phtml'); ?>
in your layout file - it will render a default header from the layout folder if the view script doesn't override it.
Have you tried looking at view helpers. They are a way of structuring view logic into reusable and modular code. In this case you would use a view helper to generate each of your required segments. So your example view script would look like
$this->Layout()->header = $this->header();
$this->Layout()->main = $this->main();
$this->Layout()->footer = $this->footer();
The benefit of using view helpers over include and require statements is that all of the file handling and name resolution is handled by the framework. The manual has more information on how to set up the paths and usage examples etc.
helpers are good. Another option is like the above, putting filenames in header/footer - put the template names and use $this->render($this->layout()->header)), etc etc. This is just like the include/require above, but more consistent.