How to pass variables to another controller in Laravel - php

Question

I have a product controller and a header controller. When loading the product controller, I use Route::forward() to load my header controller.
return View::make('frontend.catalogue.product.view')
->with('head', Route::forward("GET", "frontend/page/head"));
I can then echo out the header on the page by doing:
<?php echo $head; ?>
Simple. However, I want to pass information to the header controller which will be defined in the product controller, such as the page title or meta description.
Ideally I would either be able to pass an array to the header, or have an instantiated class somewhere which both route requests have access to.
I've tried instantiating a library in my base controller constructor, however this gets re-instantiated on each Route::forward() request so any properties I set can't be read in the next forward.
The only way I can think of doing this is using session data, but that doesn't seem like it would be the best way to do it.
The header does need to be a controller and not just a view composer, as it deals with it's own models etc.
I know Laravel doesn't do HMVC, which would be the ideal solution, and I know there are bundles for HMVC, but I'm curious how you would approach this the Laravel way.
(Using Laravel 3.2 btw)

Answer 1

Managed to get this working how I want. For others interested:
Instead of using
return View::make('frontend.catalogue.product.view')
->with('head', Route::forward("GET", "frontend/page/head"));
I now do the following in the main request controller:
$document = array(
'meta_title' => 'My Title',
'meta_description' => 'My Description',
);
// Output the view
return View::make('frontend.catalogue.category.view')
->with('head', Controller::call('frontend.page.head#index', array($document)));
and in my frontend/page/head controller, I have the following:
public function action_index($document = array()) {
$meta_title = isset($document['meta_title']) ? $document['meta_title'] : 'Default Title';
return View::make('frontend.page.head')
->with('meta_title', $meta_title);
}
Props to the friendly guys on the Laravel IRC for helping with this