__toString problems - php

Question

I'm building a little MVC system (learning) and I have some problems with showing variables in my view files.
This is from my View class:
private $vars = array();
public function __set($key, $value)
{
$this->vars[$key] = $value;
}
public function __get($key)
{
return $this->vars[$key];
}
public function __toString()
{
return $this->vars[$key];
}
public function show($file)
{
global $router;
$folder = strtolower($router->current_controller);
$path = VIEWPATH.$folder.'/'.$file.'.phtml';
if ( ! file_exists($path))
{
die("Template: $file, not found");
}
include ($path);
}
And here is from my controller:
$test = new View();
$test->name = 'karl';
$test->show('name_view');
And the view file (name_view)
echo $name // doesn't work
echo $this->name // Works
What am I doing wrong? Perhaps I haft to make something global?
THX / Tobias
EDIT: I just extracted the vars array in the view class right before I include the view file and then it worked.. Thank you for all help.

Answer 1

There is no $key in __toString()!
Also __toString() doesn't accept any parameters!
Test it with this:
public function __toString()
{
return json_encode($this->vars);
}
After your edit I realized that your problem is not on the __toString() method (you can just delete it since you're not using it). Doing echo $this->name is the correct way to show variables from inside your view in your case, however if you want to just do echo $name may I suggest a different approach?
function View($view)
{
if (is_file($view) === true)
{
$arguments = array_slice(func_get_args(), 1);
foreach ($arguments as $argument)
{
if (is_array($argument) === true)
{
extract($argument, EXTR_OVERWRITE);
}
}
require($view);
}
}
Use the View function like this:
$data = array
(
'name' => 'karl',
);
View('/path/to/your/name_view.phtml', $data);
Now it should work just by doing echo $name;, you can adapt it to your View class if you want to. If that doesn't work, try changing the name_view view extension to .php.