CakePHP3 Render View to a Variable

Question

I want to render the view to a variable without directly sending it to the browser. I used to do it with cakephp2.*. But, I cannot figure out how to do it in CakePHP3. Could you please tell me how to do it?

Answer 1

ViewBuilder was introduced in CakePHP 3.1 and handles the rendering of views. When ever I want to render to a variable I always go look at how send email works.

From a controller:

 function index() {
     // you can have view variables.
     $data = 'A view variable';

     // create a builder (hint: new ViewBuilder() constructor works too)
     $builder = $this->viewBuilder();

     // configure as needed
     $builder->layout('default');
     $builder->template('index');
     $builder->helpers(['Html']);

     // create a view instance
     $view = $builder->build(compact('data'));

     // render to a variable
     $output = $view->render();
 }