Hi,

I’m using multiple view files for various elements of the rendered page, such as the header, footer, and other widgets.

CodeIgniter docs suggest I should be loading these views entirely from the controller like so:

I have just recently begun loading the ‘header’ and ‘footer’ views from within the ‘user/register’ view itself using:

This way I only have to load the ‘user/register’ view from the controller, but is it good practice? Are all the benifits of using views ( as opposed to just echoing data ) still intact?

yes, but you have to use

somewhere (controller, generally) to get any variables defined ... or you could define them in the view (ick) and pass them as the second parameter.

The simplest method is to have a $data property that is available in all methods of the given controller. Then you use this property to assign global and controller method specific views variables:

If you prefer abstraction on an application-wide scope, you can take a look at my Template library, linked in my sig below:

Two nice variations, thanks!

My end goal is to have CodeIgniter serve XML documents and use client side XSLT to render useful pages.

I’m hoping I can still achieve this using views, but I know hooking or rewriting the output class is another option.

Theres many great features in CI, just takes a bit of getting used to :D

@Colin Williams… I’d submit that using $this->load->vars() CI loader method is “simpler” than adding a class variable to your controller. And it’s shorter. Unless by “simpler” you mean “I prefer it”

This shows a typical use (used in the constructor) of the vars() method of the Loader class. And, incidentally, it’s also the way I prefer to do this sort of thing. Thanks Colin for a nice Template to work from!

How would you handle passing over a page title in this case? or if there a better way of handling page titles?

prezet - 19 August 2008 06:30 PM

How would you handle passing over a page title in this case? or if there a better way of handling page titles?

Exactly what I was wondering about.. Can someone please answer this?

I’m doing this way: I’m breaking the whole template into partial views (header, content, footer ...) and I’m using another view called container which binds them together. The content view is passed as a string to the container view by the controller an the rest are just loaded directly by the container. The code looks something like this:

The views:

file: container_view.php

file: header_view.php

file: footer_view.php

file: some_content_view.php

The controller:

file: Test.php

Cheers!

sophistry - 16 August 2008 12:44 AM

@Colin Williams… I’d submit that using $this->load->vars() CI loader method is “simpler” than adding a class variable to your controller. And it’s shorter. Unless by “simpler” you mean “I prefer it”

This shows a typical use (used in the constructor) of the vars() method of the Loader class. And, incidentally, it’s also the way I prefer to do this sort of thing. Thanks Colin for a nice Template to work from!

class Blog extends Controller {
      
   function Blog()
   {
      parent::Controller();
      // load entire view output into object scope
      $this->load->vars( array(
         'header' => $this->load->view('header', '', TRUE),
         'footer' => $this->load->view('footer', '', TRUE)
      ));
   }
   
   function index()
   {
      $data['blogs'] = $this->blog_model->get_recent(5);
      $data['content'] = $this->load->view('blog/front', $data, TRUE);
      $this->load->view('template', $data);
   }
   
} 

Just to confirm…. does this mean that the variables available to views are as follows?
blog/front: header, footer, blogs
template: header, footer, blogs, content

So in other words, $this->load->vars is appended to by any data you submit later?

yes, the vars() method of the loader class allow a kind of “global” variable that is available to any view.

The Loader Class Documentation

I know I’m only like 6+ months late on this topic but I found it while doing a forum search.

Wanted to add one other way of approaching this is by taking advantage of the $this->load->config().

I run into the issue with quite a number of variables within my header (meta data, title, etc).  And I hate redundancy in my methods like $this->load->view(‘header’).  Like the original poster, I’d rather leave that in the view. 

Using config to tackle this problem has several payoffs.  In many instances header data may remain consistent across each page but in some cases may need to alter one or two (like title).  $this->config->item() can be called in any depth of views and is a perfect way of setting some default values to a config file and manipulate those values as you go.  Secondly, a single line in your controller does the trick:

$this->load->config(‘fileName’);

my late 2 cents XD

Thanks for article ... I also studied about it .. your post or much ... thanks
—————————————-
du hoc uc

Not sure if this is helpful but another possibility is to use a simple include within the view such as:

As long as you pass all variables needed to the original view, there is no need to “load” additional views since as far as codeigniter is concerned you have only loaded a single view.

You can check parser library which i think is a good solution for your question.

jdavidson - 12 April 2010 09:55 PM

Not sure if this is helpful but another possibility is to use a simple include within the view such as:

<?php include('system/application/views/header.php'); ?>
[..body code here...]
<?php include('system/application/views/footer.php'); ?> 

As long as you pass all variables needed to the original view, there is no need to “load” additional views since as far as codeigniter is concerned you have only loaded a single view.

I wouldn’t use this method in an MVC framework since there is no need with $this->load->view. Another thing is the paths have to be absolute/relative which mean if you did change the folder structure you have to go update all include statements.

I wouldn’t use this method in an MVC framework since there is no need with $this->load->view. Another thing is the paths have to be absolute/relative which mean if you did change the folder structure you have to go update all include statements.

Agreed ! its really against MVC structure. If we there is ability to do this using parser or defined methods then why we call view in another view:)