Rob Allen's DevNotes

With Zend_Layout on the horizon, I've been looking at how to use it and it will remove the need for my own front controller plugin which I call SiteTemplate. As a result, I need to find a new home for the view customisation stuff I do in SiteTemplate.

My current plan is to create a new front controller plugin called ViewSetup (for want of a better name!) that contains just the view setup stuff from

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Controller/Plugin/Abstract.php';

/**
 * Front Controller plug in to set up the view with the Akra view helper
 * path and some useful request variables.
 *
 */
class Akra_Controller_Plugin_ViewSetup extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract
{    
    public function dispatchLoopStartup(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
    {
        $viewRenderer = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('viewRenderer');
        $viewRenderer->setView(new Akra_View());

        // add helper path to View/Helper directory within this library
        $prefix = 'Akra_View_Helper';
        $dir = dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../View/Helper';
        $viewRenderer->view->addHelperPath($dir, $prefix);
    
        // set up variables that the view may want to know    
        $viewRenderer->view->baseUrl = $request->getBaseUrl();
        $viewRenderer->view->module = $request->getModuleName();
        $viewRenderer->view->controller = $request->getControllerName();
        $viewRenderer->view->action = $request->getActionName();
        $viewRenderer->view->theme = $request->getParam('theme', 'default');
    }
}

(I'll talk about how cool Akra_View is another time...)

I had a dig into Zend_Layout's source and it collects its view object from the view renderer too, so this works as expected. (*phew*!)

The alternative, as I see it is to put the view creation into my bootstrap and then create a series of view helpers like this one for the base url:

<?php

class Places_View_Helper_BaseUrl
{
    protected $_baseUrl;
    
    function __construct()
    {
        $fc = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
        $request = $fc->getRequest();
        $this->_baseUrl =  $request->getBaseUrl();
    }
    
    function baseUrl()
    {
        return $this->_baseUrl;
    }
}

How does everyone else do it? Is the bootstrap + many view helpers approach a better one than using a front controller plugin? Have I missed a completely obvious better solution?

This entry was posted on Sunday, 9th December 2007 at 21:09 and is filed under PHP, Zend Framework.