Zend_View: Access the view from a view helper

It’s in the manual, but I thought I’d blog about my simple View Helper setup that ensures that I can get at the view with minimal effort.

Firstly we create a parent class:

< ?php abstract class My_View_Helper_Abstract { protected $_view; public function setView($view) { $this->_view = $view;
}
}


This class contains the code required by Zend_View to collect an instance of the view and assign it to a protected variable. All my view helpers extend this class and so I can acess the view using $this->_view. For instance:


< ?php require_once 'My/View/Helper/Abstract.php'; class My_View_Helper_TreeUl extends My_View_Helper_Abstract { /** * Render a nested array as a set of nested

s.
*
* @param array|instanceof Iterator $list
* @return string
*/
function treeUl($list)
{
$output = '';
if (is_array($list) || $list instanceof Iterator) {
if (count($list) > 0) {
$output = "

\n";
foreach ($list as $item) {
$output .= "\t
• ";
  if(is_string($item)) {
  $output .= $this->_view->escape($item);
  } else {
  $output .= $this->treeUl($item);
  }
  $output .= "

\n";
}
$output .= "

\n";
}
}
return $output;
}
}

Simple, isn’t it ?!