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View Scripts - Zend_View

View Scripts

Once your controller has assigned variables and called render(), Zend_View then includes the requested view script and executes it "inside" the scope of the Zend_View instance. Therefore, in your view scripts, references to $this actually point to the Zend_View instance itself.

Variables assigned to the view from the controller are referred to as instance properties. For example, if the controller were to assign a variable 'something', you would refer to it as $this->something in the view script. (This allows you to keep track of which values were assigned to the script, and which are internal to the script itself.)

By way of reminder, here is the example view script from the Zend_View introduction.

<?php if ($this->books): ?>
 
    <!-- A table of some books. -->
    <table>
        <tr>
            <th>Author</th>
            <th>Title</th>
        </tr>
 
        <?php foreach ($this->books as $key => $val): ?>
        <tr>
            <td><?php echo $this->escape($val['author']) ?></td>
            <td><?php echo $this->escape($val['title']) ?></td>
        </tr>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
 
    </table>
 
<?php else: ?>
 
    <p>There are no books to display.</p>
 
<?php endif;?>

Escaping Output

One of the most important tasks to perform in a view script is to make sure that output is escaped properly; among other things, this helps to avoid cross-site scripting attacks. Unless you are using a function, method, or helper that does escaping on its own, you should always escape variables when you output them.

Zend_View comes with a method called escape() that does such escaping for you.

// bad view-script practice:
echo $this->variable;
 
// good view-script practice:
echo $this->escape($this->variable);

By default, the escape() method uses the PHP htmlspecialchars() function for escaping. However, depending on your environment, you may wish for escaping to occur in a different way. Use the setEscape() method at the controller level to tell Zend_View what escaping callback to use.

// create a Zend_View instance
$view = new Zend_View();
 
// tell it to use htmlentities as the escaping callback
$view->setEscape('htmlentities');
 
// or tell it to use a static class method as the callback
$view->setEscape(array('SomeClass', 'methodName'));
 
// or even an instance method
$obj = new SomeClass();
$view->setEscape(array($obj, 'methodName'));
 
// and then render your view
echo $view->render(...);

The callback function or method should take the value to be escaped as its first parameter, and all other parameters should be optional.

Using Alternate Template Systems

Although PHP is itself a powerful template system, many developers feel it is too powerful or complex for their template designers and will want to use an alternate template engine. Zend_View provides two mechanisms for doing so, the first through view scripts, the second by implementing Zend_View_Interface.

Template Systems Using View Scripts

A view script may be used to instantiate and manipulate a separate template object, such as a PHPLIB-style template. The view script for that kind of activity might look something like this:

include_once 'template.inc';
$tpl = new Template();
 
if ($this->books) {
    $tpl->setFile(array(
        "booklist" => "booklist.tpl",
        "eachbook" => "eachbook.tpl",
    ));
 
    foreach ($this->books as $key => $val) {
        $tpl->set_var('author', $this->escape($val['author']);
        $tpl->set_var('title', $this->escape($val['title']);
        $tpl->parse("books", "eachbook", true);
    }
 
    $tpl->pparse("output", "booklist");
} else {
    $tpl->setFile("nobooks", "nobooks.tpl")
    $tpl->pparse("output", "nobooks");
}

These would be the related template files:

<!-- booklist.tpl -->
<table>
    <tr>
        <th>Author</th>
        <th>Title</th>
    </tr>
    {books}
</table>
 
<!-- eachbook.tpl -->
    <tr>
        <td>{author}</td>
        <td>{title}</td>
    </tr>
 
<!-- nobooks.tpl -->
<p>There are no books to display.</p>

Template Systems Using Zend_View_Interface

Some may find it easier to simply provide a Zend_View-compatible template engine. Zend_View_Interface defines the minimum interface needed for compatability:

/**
 * Return the actual template engine object
 */
public function getEngine();
 
/**
 * Set the path to view scripts/templates
 */
public function setScriptPath($path);
 
/**
 * Set a base path to all view resources
 */
public function setBasePath($path, $prefix = 'Zend_View');
 
/**
 * Add an additional base path to view resources
 */
public function addBasePath($path, $prefix = 'Zend_View');
 
/**
 * Retrieve the current script paths
 */
public function getScriptPaths();
 
/**
 * Overloading methods for assigning template variables as object
 * properties
 */
public function __set($key, $value);
public function __isset($key);
public function __unset($key);
 
/**
 * Manual assignment of template variables, or ability to assign
 * multiple variables en masse.
 */
public function assign($spec, $value = null);
 
/**
 * Unset all assigned template variables
 */
public function clearVars();
 
/**
 * Render the template named $name
 */
public function render($name);

Using this interface, it becomes relatively easy to wrap a third-party template engine as a Zend_View-compatible class. As an example, the following is one potential wrapper for Smarty:

class Zend_View_Smarty implements Zend_View_Interface
{
    /**
     * Smarty object
     * @var Smarty
     */
    protected $_smarty;
 
    /**
     * Constructor
     *
     * @param string $tmplPath
     * @param array $extraParams
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct($tmplPath = null, $extraParams = array())
    {
        $this->_smarty = new Smarty;
 
        if (null !== $tmplPath) {
            $this->setScriptPath($tmplPath);
        }
 
        foreach ($extraParams as $key => $value) {
            $this->_smarty->$key = $value;
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * Return the template engine object
     *
     * @return Smarty
     */
    public function getEngine()
    {
        return $this->_smarty;
    }
 
    /**
     * Set the path to the templates
     *
     * @param string $path The directory to set as the path.
     * @return void
     */
    public function setScriptPath($path)
    {
        if (is_readable($path)) {
            $this->_smarty->template_dir = $path;
            return;
        }
 
        throw new Exception('Invalid path provided');
    }
 
    /**
     * Retrieve the current template directory
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getScriptPaths()
    {
        return array($this->_smarty->template_dir);
    }
 
    /**
     * Alias for setScriptPath
     *
     * @param string $path
     * @param string $prefix Unused
     * @return void
     */
    public function setBasePath($path, $prefix = 'Zend_View')
    {
        return $this->setScriptPath($path);
    }
 
    /**
     * Alias for setScriptPath
     *
     * @param string $path
     * @param string $prefix Unused
     * @return void
     */
    public function addBasePath($path, $prefix = 'Zend_View')
    {
        return $this->setScriptPath($path);
    }
 
    /**
     * Assign a variable to the template
     *
     * @param string $key The variable name.
     * @param mixed $val The variable value.
     * @return void
     */
    public function __set($key, $val)
    {
        $this->_smarty->assign($key, $val);
    }
 
    /**
     * Allows testing with empty() and isset() to work
     *
     * @param string $key
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function __isset($key)
    {
        return (null !== $this->_smarty->get_template_vars($key));
    }
 
    /**
     * Allows unset() on object properties to work
     *
     * @param string $key
     * @return void
     */
    public function __unset($key)
    {
        $this->_smarty->clear_assign($key);
    }
 
    /**
     * Assign variables to the template
     *
     * Allows setting a specific key to the specified value, OR passing
     * an array of key => value pairs to set en masse.
     *
     * @see __set()
     * @param string|array $spec The assignment strategy to use (key or
     * array of key => value pairs)
     * @param mixed $value (Optional) If assigning a named variable,
     * use this as the value.
     * @return void
     */
    public function assign($spec, $value = null)
    {
        if (is_array($spec)) {
            $this->_smarty->assign($spec);
            return;
        }
 
        $this->_smarty->assign($spec, $value);
    }
 
    /**
     * Clear all assigned variables
     *
     * Clears all variables assigned to Zend_View either via
     * {@link assign()} or property overloading
     * ({@link __get()}/{@link __set()}).
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function clearVars()
    {
        $this->_smarty->clear_all_assign();
    }
 
    /**
     * Processes a template and returns the output.
     *
     * @param string $name The template to process.
     * @return string The output.
     */
    public function render($name)
    {
        return $this->_smarty->fetch($name);
    }
}

In this example, you would instantiate the Zend_View_Smarty class instead of Zend_View, and then use it in roughly the same fashion as Zend_View:

//Example 1. In initView() of initializer.
$view = new Zend_View_Smarty('/path/to/templates');
$viewRenderer =
    Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('ViewRenderer');
$viewRenderer->setView($view)
             ->setViewBasePathSpec($view->_smarty->template_dir)
             ->setViewScriptPathSpec(':controller/:action.:suffix')
             ->setViewScriptPathNoControllerSpec(':action.:suffix')
             ->setViewSuffix('tpl');
 
//Example 2. Usage in action controller remains the same...
class FooController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
    public function barAction()
    {
        $this->view->book   = 'Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide';
        $this->view->author = 'Davey Shafik and Ben Ramsey'
    }
}
 
//Example 3. Initializing view in action controller
class FooController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
    public function init()
    {
        $this->view   = new Zend_View_Smarty('/path/to/templates');
        $viewRenderer = $this->_helper->getHelper('viewRenderer');
        $viewRenderer->setView($this->view)
                     ->setViewBasePathSpec($view->_smarty->template_dir)
                     ->setViewScriptPathSpec(':controller/:action.:suffix')
                     ->setViewScriptPathNoControllerSpec(':action.:suffix')
                     ->setViewSuffix('tpl');
    }