I'm pleased to announce that the
Zend_View Enhanced
and Zend_Layout
components are now in the Zend Framework
core. With these two components, you can now create some truly
complex views
for your application with relative ease.
The two components tackle several view related tasks:
- Layouts, or Two Step Views
- Partials (view fragment scripts with their own variable scope)
- Placeholders (store data and/or markup for later retrieval)
- Actions (dispatch a controller action)
So, what's the big deal? Much, if not all of this, was already possible, I
hear some people saying. Well, yes, technically it was; in fact, all of
these, except layouts, were accomplished by the addition of extra view
helpers, which anybody could have written (and, in fact, some did). However,
by having these as a standard part of the library, there are now standard
ways to perform these tasks -- meaning consistency between applications.
Plus, these helpers just make things so much simpler!
For instance, who out there has all the DOCTYPE declarations memorized? I
personally know all the types, but can't rattle off the entire declarations
associated with each to save my life. With the doctype() helper,
all I have to do is:
<?= $this->doctype('XHTML1_TRANSITIONAL') ?>
and it's now present. Furthermore, by putting this at the top of my layout,
when I display my scripts as aggregated in the headScript()
helper, they'll now be properly escaped as XML CDATA, as helpers that need
to be DOCTYPE aware now determine this information from that helper.
Speaking of the headScript() helper, it's pretty handy. Let's say
you have an application that requires javascript. Instead of unconditionally
specifying the javascript include for every controller, or setting up
complex logic for determining when to include it, you can have your
application view specify it's needed:
<?php $this->headScript()->appendFile('/js/foo.js') ?>
Then, in your master layout script, you tell it to include any scripts
aggregated:
<?= $this->headScript() ?>
You can do similarly for specifying feeds (via headLink()),
stylesheets (via headLink() for external files,
headStyle() for inline stylesheets), and even your title element
(for instance, you could aggregate your various breadcrumbs, and then
specify a custom separator to use between them).
This is really just the tip of the iceberg. Using a combination of
placeholders, partials, actions, and normal view helpers, you can then
create some pretty complex layouts using minimal markup. As an example:
<?=
$this->
doctype('XHTML1_TRANSITIONAL') ?><html>
<head>
<?=
$this->
headTitle() ?> <?=
$this->
headMeta()->
setIndent(8) ?> <?=
$this->
headLink()->
setIndent(8) ?> <?=
$this->
headStyle()->
setIndent(8) ?> <?=
$this->
headScript()->
setIndent(8) ?> </head>
<body>
<?=
$this->
partial('header.phtml') ?> <div id=
"content">
<?=
$this->
layout()->
content ?> </div>
<?=
$this->
subnav() ?> <?=
$this->
partial('footer.phtml') ?> <?=
$this->
inlineScript() ?> </body>
</html>
The example above makes use of several placeholders (doctype,
HeadTitle, HeadMeta, HeadLink,
HeadStyle, HeadScript, and InlineScript),
two partials (for the header and footer), layout content, and a custom view
helper (for navigation); the entire thing is less than 20 lines long, yet
contains everything necessary for your site layout.
The functionality of these new components is not only broad, but deep as
well, and can't be covered in a single blog post. Look for a series of
tutorials on the Zend Developer Zone
detailing them in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can read the
documentation available in the ZF subversion repository.
Matthew O'Phinney notes today that the Zend_View_Enhanced and Zend_Layout components for ...
Tracked: Dec 20, 09:02
Matthew Weier O’Phinney niespe?na miesi?c temu poinformowa? w swoim blogu, ?e do Zend Framework do??czono nowy komponent Zend_Layout oraz rozszerzono mo?liwo?ci Zend_View. Wydaj? si? to by? bardzo ciekawe ficzery, zatem przyjrzyjmy si...
Tracked: Jan 08, 01:53