I am currently working on a project developed using Zend Framework, based on the structure of my web page design I have reached a point where I have to pass a small number of variables to my layout from each Controller/Action. These variables are:
<?php Zend_Layout::getMvcInstance()->assign('pageId', 'page1'); ?>
<?php Zend_Layout::getMvcInstance()->assign('headerType', '<header id="index">'); ?>
The reason for passing this information is firstly, I pass the page id as the multi column layout may change depending on the content being displayed, thus the page id within the body tag links the appropriate CSS to how the page should be displayed. Secondly I display a promotional jQuery slider only on the index page, but I need the flexibility to have it displayed on potentially multiple pages in case the wind changes and the client changes their mind.
My actual question: Is there a more appropriate method of passing this information to the Layout that I am overlooking?
I am not really questioning whether the information has to be sent, rather is there some Zend Framework feature that I have, in my haste, overlooked which would reduce the amount of repetitive redundant code which may very well be repeated in multiple Actions within the same controller?
You could turn that logic into an action helper than you can call from your controllers in a more direct way. You could also make a view helper to accomplish the same thing but view helpers usually generate data for the view rather than set properties.
// library/PageId.php
class Lib_PageId extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract
{
public function direct($title, $pageId, $headerType)
{
$view = $this->getActionController()->view;
$view->headTitle()->append($title);
$view->pageId = $pageId;
$view->headerType = $headerType;
}
}
In your controller actions you can now do this:
$this->_helper->PageId('Homepage', 'page1', 'index');
// now pageId and headerType are available in the view and
// Homepage has been appended to the title
You will also need to register the helper path in your Bootstrap like this:
protected function _initActionHelpers()
{
Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::addPrefix('Lib');
}
Doing it like that can reduce the amount of repetitive code and remove needing to assign the values from the view. You can do it in the controller very quickly. You can also have default values in the case that the helper hasn't been called.
You shoudn't really be passing anything from the view to the layout, for a start the view should be included IN the layout, not the other way around.
So, setting your page title should be done using similar code to what you have, but inside the controller action being called:
$this->view->headTitle()->append('Homepage');
And the other two issues - you need to rethink as I stated to begin with. Maybe you're misunderstanding the layout/view principle? If you include the different views per action, then you simply change the div id when needed, and include the header for your banner only in the index.phtml file.
Related
Within the onBeforeRendering() function of a view how should I determine if a specific node is present in the model and modify the model to include the node if not? This question is about lazy loading of data to the model for data that will be infrequently accessed by users but would have a performance penalty if loaded with initial model data.
My use case has a list page leading to a detail page for whatever item in the list the use clicks. On the detail page is a set of tabs which expose sub-details related to the selected detail. Specifically a long text description of a the brief for a task.
The tab control leads via manifest.json style routing to display a view in the tabs content area.
This is my current working code which is within the onBeforeRendering event of the view controller:
onBeforeRendering: function(oEvent){
var sPath = this.getView().getBindingContext("Projects").getPath(); // something like /task/6
console.log('Path='+sPath)
var oModel = this.getView().getModel("Projects");
var oTask = oModel.getProperty(sPath + "/brief");
if (oTask) { // looks like /brief exists so must already have loaded the brief
// nothing to do
console.log('Use existing data')
}
else { // /brief not yet present so we need to load it up
console.log('Load new data')
oModel.setProperty(sPath + "/brief", "This is the brief...") // replace with loaddata() from server, use attachRequestCompleted to call function to modify model.
}}
Question - is this the correct approach?
Edit: Based on discussion in this question I modified my code to use an event that fires per display of the view. onBeforeRendering turned out to run without much apparent predictability - which I am sure it has but in any case I wanted a one-per-display event. Also, I fleshed out the code further but retained the basic structure and it appears to do what I wanted.
This is a valid approach. But you should think aboute following use case: What happens if the data you loaded have been changed at the backend? The JSONModel does not give you any support here as it acts dumb data store only.
I don't really know how to word the title well, but here's my issue. I decided instead of having 25 controllers to handle pages, I have one PageController with a viewAction that takes in a :page parameter - for example, http://localhost/website/page/about-us would direct to PageController::viewAction() with a parameter of page = about-us. All of the pages are stored in a templates folder, so the viewrenderer is set to render application\templates\default\about-us.phtml.
I did this so I can consolidate and it seemed like a better approach. My question is the following: lets say when the page request is contact-us, I would need a Zend_Form to be used within the contact page. So, I would need a way within PageController::viewAction() to recognize that the page needs to have a form built, build the form, and also upon submission the need to process it (maybe this should be handled in an abstract process method - not sure).
I have no idea how to implement this. I thought maybe I can store a column with the name of a form and a connecting page identifier. Even better, create a one-to-many page to forms, and then in the submission loop through the forms and check if submitted and if so then process it (maybe there is a isSubmitted() method within zend_form. I really don't know how to handle this, and am looking for any help i can get.
Thanks!
Here is something that came to mind that may work or help point you in a direction that works for you.
This may only work well assuming you were to have no more than one form per page, if you need more than one form on a page, you would have to do something beyond this automatic form handling.
Create a standard location for forms that are attached to pages (e.g. application/forms/page). This is where the automatic forms associated with pages will be kept.
In your viewAction, you could take advantage of the autoloader to see if a form for that page exists. For example:
$page = $this->getParam('page');
$page = ucfirst(preg_replace('/-(\w)/ie', "strtoupper('$1')", $page)); // contact-us -> ContactUs
$class = 'Application_Form_Page_' . $page;
// class_exists will invoke the autoloader to map a class to a file
if (class_exists($class)) {
// a form is defined for this page
$form = new $class();
// check if form was posted
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
if ($form->isValid($this->getRequest()->getPost()) {
// form is valid - determine how to process it
}
}
// assign the form to the view
$this->view->pageForm = $form;
}
All this really leaves out is the action you take to process a specific form. Since the contact form will likely generate an email, and another form may insert data into a database, you will need some sort of callback system or perhaps another class that can be mapped automatically which contains the form processor code.
Anyway something along those lines is what came to mind first, I hope that helps give you some more ideas.
I am currently learning template variables and trying to understand how they work and what they mean.
I've done a test on {$category->id_cms_category}, which I put in cms.tpl and I get a result 9, but when I put this in header.tpl or blockcms.tpl (left column), there is no results, it's blank.
Can somebody please explain how this works and how I can get the same result in different .tpl file?
I think the question is really how to assign $category class to for example header.tpl. Is it something to do with controllers?
Why can't I use certain variables everywhere? How does this work? I would be very happy if somebody explain this.
I am also still learning smarty.
Unfortunately you're hitting a common problem with smarty, and particularly how it's implemented within Prestashop.
Smarty variables are very much limited in scope within Prestashop and their scope is determined by which point the portion of code they are assigned in is run. In the case of {$category->id_cms_category} it is assigned within the CMSController at the point in which the main content (important stuff in the middle) is rendered, and so will be available within cms.tpl as you have demonstrated.
The reason it isn't available in the left column or in the header is due to the order in which each of these sections are rendered. This will be:
a) Header (top of page rather than the html header block specifically), then
b) Left Column, then
c) "Main" Content, then
d) Right Column, then
e) Footer
You should find that if you were to reference it in the right column or the footer of the page, then magically it will be available to you (on CMS pages only of course as we're relying on the CMSController being run and assigning it a value).
If you need to reference things like the cms category within the header of the page (maybe to set a highlight on horizontal navigation) then you're going to need to fetch the value and assign it to smarty yourself. You can do this in one of two ways:
1) Write a module which is hooked into the header and assign your variable there
2) Override the FrontController class and assign the smarty variable there (e.g. in the init function)
An example of 2) which you could try is to create a file /override/classes/FrontController.php containing:
<?php
class FrontController extends FrontControllerCore
{
function init() {
parent::init();
$id_cms_category = (int)Tools::getValue('id_cms_category');
$id_cms_page = (int)Tools::getValue('id_cms');
self::$smarty->assign(array(
'my_cms_category_id' => $id_cms_category,
'my_cms_page_id' => $id_cms_page
)
);
}
}
The above should allow you to display {my_cms_category_id} and {my_cms_page_id} anywhere in your theme (because we're setting the smarty variables before everything else is rendered). For a non-cms page they should both be 0, my_cms_category_id should be set non-zero on cms category pages, and {my_cms_page_id} should be non-zero when on a specific cms page.
Hope this goes some way to making it a little clearer!
I want to add some javacsript to a Zend_Form_Element_Text .
At first I thought a decorator would be the best way to do it, but since it is just a script (the markup doesn't change) then maybe a view helper is better? or a view script?
It seems like they are all for the same purpose (regarding a form element).
The javascript I want to add is not an event (e.g. change, click, etc.). I can add it easily with headScript() but I want to make it re-usable , that's why I thought about a decorator/view helper. I'm just not clear about the difference between them.
What is the best practice in this case? advantages?
UPDATE: Seems like the best practice is to use view helpers from view scripts , so decorators would be a better fit?
Thanks.
You could create your own decorator by extending Zend_From_Decorator_Abstract and generate your snippet in it's render() method :
class My_Decorator_FieldInitializer extends Zend_Form_Decorator_Abstract {
public function render($content){
$separator = $this->getSeparator();
$element = $this->getElement();
$output = '<script>'.
//you write your js snippet here, using
//the data you have in $element if you need
.'</script>';
return $content . $separator . $output;
}
}
If you need more details, ask for it in a comment, i'll edit this answer. And I didn't test this code.
Use setAttrib function.
eg:-
$element = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('test');
$element->setAttrib('onclick', 'alert("Test")');
I'm not actually seeing where this needs to be a decorator or a view-helper or a view-script.
If I wanted to attach some client-side behavior to a form element, I'd probably set an attribute with $elt->setAttrib('class', 'someClass') or $elt->setAttrib('id', 'someId'), some hook onto which my script can attach. Then I'd add listeners/handlers to those targeted elements.
For example, for a click handler using jQuery , it would be something like:
(function($){
$(document).ready(function(){
$('.someClass').click(function(e){
// handle the event here
});
});
})(jQuery);
The benefit is that it is unobtrusive, so the markup remains clean. Hopefully, the javascript is an enhancement- not a critical part of the functionality - so it degrades gracefully.
Perhaps you mean that this javascript segment itself needs to be reusable across different element identifiers - someClass, in this example. In this case, you could simply write a view-helper that accepts the CSS class name as the parameter.
"the markup doesn't change", Yap,
but I like to add some javascript function throw ZendForm Element:
$text_f = new Zend_Form_Element_Text("text_id");
$text_f->setAttrib('OnChange', 'someFunction($(this));');
The best way is if you are working with a team, where all of you should use same code standard. For me and my team this is the code above.
I have this library in CI that retrieves my latest twitter updates. It has a function that sends my latest updates as objects to my controller.
I would like to show these twitter updates on the footer of my page, so they're visible at all times.
Now my question is how I call these directly from a view? I know this is not a good practice in MVC but I don't see how else I could do this.
My controller currently takes care of all my different pages (it's a small website) and I don't think it's very good practice to call my twitter class at the end of every page-function in the controller and then send it through to the views.
Typycally I do this in my controller:
<?php
function index(){
$data['page'] = 'home';
//i don't want to call my twitter class here every single time I write a new page. (DRY?!)
$this->load->view('template', $data);
}
?>
And it loads the "template" view that looks like this:
<?php
$this->load->view('header');
$this->load->view('pages/'.$page);
$this->load->view('footer');
?>
So any suggestions how I should do this?
I have a helper library that takes a page Partial and wraps it in the master theme. You can use the optional parameter on your load->view to render to a string.
Then when you render your master page, you can load the twitter updates, and display them. Although, I highly suggest caching your twitter response for 5 minutes at least, will save you a LOT of overhead.
Example:
// Controller somwhere:
$content = $this->load->view('pages/'.$page, array(), true);
$this->myLibrary->masterPage($content);
// Your library:
function masterPage($content)
{
$twitterData = $this->twitter->loadStuff(); // whatever your function is
$twitter = $this->load->view('twitter_bar', array('data' => $twitterData), true);
$this->load->view('master', array('content' => $content, 'twitter' => $twitter);
}
An alternative approach is to use a base controller. All my controllers extend my custom base controller which holds things I need on every page, for example an object containing the current user.