view render in zend not working properly as expected - zend-framework

Question

My zend layout and scripts are detecting fine. but when in init function of my IndexController I write $this->view->render("header.phtml") It does not show anything one the screen, whereas when I write echo ($this->view->render("header.phtml"); it displays my header.phtml file. Here is my IndexController
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
public function init()
{
$layout = $this->_helper->layout();
//$this->view = $this->getResource('View');
echo ($this->view->render("header.phtml"));
//echo"<pre>";
//var_dump($this->view);
//var_dump(APPICATION_PATH);
}
public function indexAction()
{
// action body
echo "In default index con";
}
}
Also when Igive my url to/mypath/index It does not display the simple line "I'm in index controller" which I'm just echoing. In my bootstrap here is my Zend_Layout settings.
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_View');
$this->view = new Zend_View();
$this->view->setEncoding('UTF-8');
$this->view->setScriptPath($this->root .'/application/default/views/scripts');
$viewRenderer=new Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_ViewRenderer();
// Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::addHelper($viewRenderer);
// $view->setScriptPath($this->root.'/'.$theme.'/views/scripts/');
//$view->setScriptPath($this->root.'/application/default/views/scripts/');
$this->view->addScriptPath($this->root.'/application/admin/views/scripts');
$this->view->addScriptPath($this->root.'/application/business/views/scripts');
// $this->view->setHelperPath($this->root .'/application/default/views/helpers');
$this->layout = Zend_Layout::startMvc(
array(
'layoutPath' => $this->root . '/application/default/views/'.$crt_theme.'/layouts',
'layout' => 'layout'
)
);
$this->registry->set("theme", $crt_theme);
variable $crt_theme is set to 'default'.

Answer 1

Rob' answer is correct although you may need some more information as you appear to be working hard at making this complicated. ZF when used as an MVC has a place to put layouts and defaults for using them.
If you are using the Zend_Tool command line interface start with the commmand: zf enable layout and the tool will add the default directory and a default layout.phtml to your project.
in the application.ini it will add the line:
resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/layouts/scripts/"
and at that path it will add the file layout.phtml
If you need to change the name of the default layout add this line with the name of your script without the .phtml
resources.layout.layout = master
There are as many ways as you can think of to use this file, but here is an example of how I use it.
I like to set my project defaults in my application.ini file so if I need to change anything it's easy.
View Settings
;*************
resources.view[]=
resources.view.charset = "UTF-8"
resources.view.encoding = "UTF-8"
resources.view.doctype = "HTML5"
resources.view.language = "en"
resources.view.contentType = "text/html; charset=UTF-8"
then in my bootstrap I setup the view I want use, I do it here so that if I have multiple layouts (i usually do) it's easy to change css or js files in one place.
protected function _initView() {
//Initialize view
$view = new Zend_View();
$view->addHelperPath('/../library/Application/View/Helper');
$view->doctype(Zend_Registry::get('config')->resources->view->doctype);
$view->headTitle('Our Home');
$view->headMeta()->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Type', Zend_Registry::get(
'config')->resources->view->contentType);
$view->headLink()->setStylesheet('/css/normalize.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/blueprint/src/liquid.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/blueprint/src/typography.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet(
'/javascript/mediaelement/build/mediaelementplayer.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/main.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/nav.css');
$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/table.css');
//add javascript files
$view->headScript()->setFile('/javascript/mediaelement/build/jquery.js');
$view->headScript()->appendFile('/javascript/modernizr.js');
//add it to the view renderer
$viewRenderer = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper(
'ViewRenderer');
$viewRenderer->setView($view);
//Return it, so that it can be stored by the bootstrap
return $view;
}
Notice all of those headLink(), headScript() and docType() entries, these are where the data is set for placeholders, that will be used in the layout.
Now the layout, the actual content from your other action based scripts will typically be rendered by the placeholder $this->layout()->content
<?php
echo $this->doctype() . "\n";//placeholder
?>
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<?php echo $this->headMeta() . "\n" ?><!-- displays all meta data passed -->
<?php echo $this->headLink() . "\n" ?><!-- displays all links passed -->
<?php echo $this->headscript(). "\n"?><!-- displays all scripts passed -->
</head>
<body>
<section class="container">
<header class="block">
<hgroup id="header" class ="column span-24">
<h1>Our Home</h1>
</hgroup>
<nav>
<div id="nav" class="column span-24">
<?php echo $this->layout()->nav ?> <!-- Custom Placeholder -->
</div>
</nav>
</header>
<section class="block">
<div id="main" class="column span-18 border">
<div id="flash">
<?php
//flash messenger display location
if (count($this->messages) > 0) {
printf("<h3 id='flash'>%s</h3>", $this->messages[0]);
}
?>
</div>
<?php echo $this->layout()->content; ?><!-- Default placeholder, where views are rendered -->
</div>
<aside id="sidebar" class="column span-4 last">
<?php echo $this->layout()->search ?><!-- Custom placeholder -->
<div id="subNav">
<?php echo $this->layout()->subNav ?> <!-- Custom placeholder -->
</div>
<div id="adminMenu">
<h4>Administration Links</h4>
<?php echo $this->layout()->adminMenu ?> <!-- Custom placeholder -->
</div>
</aside>
</section>
<footer class="block">
<div id="footer" class="column span-24">
<p>Created with Zend Framework. &COPY; </p>
</div>
</footer>
</section>
<?php echo $this->inlineScript() ?><!-- placeholder -->
</body>
</html>
Hope this helps!
[Edit]
One more thing, this always seems to be the next question. "How do I change my layout from the default in my controller/action?"
to change the layout from your controller you would typically do it with a preDispatch() method and just pass the name of your new layout to the layout helper.
$this->_helper->layout->setLayout('myOtherLayout');
doing just this will change the layout for every action in the controller. To be more selective you can use a conditional, like:
if ($this->getRequest()->getActionName() == 'player') {
$this->_helper->layout->setLayout('player');//reset layout
//add 2 new headscripts
$this->view->headScript()->appendFile(
'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js'
);
$this->view->headScript()->appendFile(
'/javascript/mediaplayer/jwplayer.js'
);
}

Answer 2

render() is working as intended; it returns a string that you should then echo.
It is very unusual to be rendering directly in a controller however. At a minimum, you should be rendering your header and footer from views/scripts/index/index.phtml, though using Zend_Layout would be even better. If you are using Zend_Application, then you can start using Zend_Layout simply by adding:
resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/layouts/scripts/"
to your application/config/application.ini file. You then need to create a application/layouts/scripts/layout.phtml file which could look something like this:
<?php
$this->headMeta()->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Type', 'text/html;charset=utf-8');
$this->headTitle()->setSeparator(' - ');
$this->headTitle('My website');
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<?php echo $this->headMeta(); ?>
<?php echo $this->headTitle(); ?>
<!-- Other <head> elements and view helpers here -->
</head>
<body>
<div id="content">
<?php echo $this->layout()->content; ?>
</div>
</body>
</html>