Change element's text in CakePHP - php

Question

I have an element called userbar on every page - it tells the user if he/she is logged in or not. I created this element and echoed it in default.ctp:
<?php echo $this->element('userbar', array('text' => 'You are not logged in.')); ?>
Now it shows on every page. However, I can't find anywhere how to change this text. For e.g., I would like to access this element from some controller and change it. How?

Answer 1

You set a view variable and then use that.
<?php
class MyController extends AppController
{
function myaction () {
$this->set ('my_var', 'You are not logged in');
}
}
?>
And then in the view:
<?php echo $this->element ('userbar', array ('text' => $my_var)); ?>
Considering this is something you'd do on every page request its best to put it in the AppController::beforeFilter().
There are other ways to do this. But if you render the element in the controller you still need to set a view variable and echo that in the view.
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I think that vanneto did a good job on answering the question very specifically. But based on my opinion what happens here is a design flaw. That's why I add this answer to give you another option on how to approach this question. Because I see this kind of solutions and on the longer run they cause issues.
The case is a logged-in or logged-out text.
Let's say that you use the Auth component:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/components/authentication.html
We will start at the controller, likely you have something like this in the AppController:
public function beforeFilter() {
parent::beforeFilter();
$this->set('userIsLoggedIn', AuthComponent:: loggedIn());
$this->set('loggedInUser', AuthComponent::user());
}
So what this does: At every request it sends the logged in user to the view. Now you could say the controller could have an if statement to detect which text should be sent out but it's not really necessary.
In you element you could do that also.
So in your element put something like:
if($userIsLoggedIn) {
echo 'User is logged in.';
}else{
echo 'You are not logged in!';
}
Generally we move a bit more to helper to implement this kind of logic because they are classes which have more options for well styled coding. But it's also doable simply with an element.
So now you got the texts right. Then you get to the point: Does a static text belong to the element? No, it does not. So what would improve it is to implement it like:
if($userIsLoggedIn) {
echo __('User is logged in');
}else{
echo __('User is not logged in');
}
That way you can put the static texts into your .po files. If you don't know what they are:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/internationalization-and-localization.html
The element can now be used also if your site becomes multi language for example. Or you could let your textwriter edit the texts without touching the source code.
As you see it's a different approach but I think it will give you more clear code. It decoupled the code, the controller does his task, the element does his task and the text is also seperated out because it doesn't belong hardcoded in the views.
In terms of code it's not much more so I would strongly advise some solution which looks like this. Could also be done with a helper.
Some sources on this kind of approaches:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#Decoupling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle