Passing variables to views in Laravel4 - php

Question

I am very newbie about all of these PHP Frameworks. I was once created my own framework by using phpbb's template functions, language support and sessions. I turned them into a Model-View framework. I decided that is too complicated and searched for a new framework.
Right now I am using laravel and its quite well yet I still couldn't figure how to handle controllers and views. Here comes my stuck part.
I was using my phpbb's framework by creating a file.php to root folder and create a .html file styles folder. phpbb's framework can render a html file by calling
$template->set_filenames(array(
'body' => 'file.html'
));
however i can pass every variable to file.html from the controller.php like this :
$template->assign_var('THREAD_ID', $row['id']);
$template->assign_var('THREAD_NAME', $row['title']);
even cycles were too easy
while ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result))
{
$template->assign_block_vars('post_row', array
(
'ID' => $row['post_id'],
'COUNT' => $count++,
'USERNAME' => $row['post_username'],
'DATE' => $row['post_datetime'],
'ENTRY' => $row['post_entry'],
)
);
}
and then for rendering the view
$template->set_filenames(array(
'body' => 'file.html'
));
this is what i couldnt understand in laravel.
I am using this but when I using this for another variable it gives me error.
$this->layout->nest('content', 'index', array(
'data' => 'pokeçu'
));
in documents they made examples just for one variable. I dont know how to continue my way.

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're using Laravel 3, as that is the current stable version. There's a section in the Laravel docs covering this. Basically you're going to be using the View class in whatever way suits your app best. Remember, your controller methods (or route closures) will always return something, usually a View instance. To bind data to that view, the simplest method is to use with($data[, $value]) where $data is either an associative key-value array, or $data is a key and $value is the value. For example:
public function get_index()
{
$thread = array('id'=>23, 'name'=>'Skidoo');
return View::make('home.index')->with($thread);
}
Note the return. You don't need to return it right away. You can also instantiate the View object, and bind data to it directly:
public function get_index()
{
$view = View::make('home.index');
$view->thread = array('id'=>23, 'name'=>'Skidoo');
$view->welcome = 'Welcome to My Site!';
return $view;
}
In addition to the docs, there are a couple of recent tutorial books available. Check out the Learn section on the Laravel website at http://laravel.com/