Getting Started: Views¶

What does a view do?¶

A view contains the html the user should see. All additional resources like css, images or javascript are also loaded from views. Views do usually not contain a footer, navigation, header or other elements that belong to the overall layout of the page. For this, layouts should be used as without a layout, a view can't be renderer. Read more about layouts here.

Database access and heavy logic should not be used in the view as that belong into other parts of the application.

Structure¶

A view should be placed in the z_views directory of your project, otherwise it will not be found when called from the render method.

It is a php file which returns an array with up to three attributes. head and body are functions that get executed in the layout at the matching place. lang is optional and holds language data useable by $opt["lang"].

head and body should accept a parameter called $opt. It contains data passed into the $opt parameter of the render method. For the view to communicate back to a controller, asynchronous methods must be used.

Simple example view¶

<?php return ["body" => function($opt) { ?>
    <h1>Hello World</h1>
<?php }]; ?>

Example view using a passed value / option¶

// Controller
public function action_index(Request $req, Response $res) {
    return $res->render("employee/employee_index.php", [
        "value" => "Hello World"
    ]);
}

// View
<?php return ["body" => function($opt) { ?>
    <h1>$opt["value"]</h1>
<?php }]; ?>

Complete example view with localization¶

<?php return ["head" => function($opt) { ?>
    <title>Mitarbeiterverwaltung</title>
<?php }, "body" => function($opt) { ?> 
    <div class="card">
        <div class="card-header">
            <h1><?= $opt["lang"]("header") ?></h1>
        </div>
        <div class="card-body">
            <h1>$opt["value"]</h1>
        </div>
    </div>
<?php }, "lang" => [
    "en" => [
        "header" => "Welcome!"
    ],
    "DE_Formal" => [
        "header" => "Willkommen"
    ]
]]; ?>

More examples for views can be found in z_framework/default/views.