Codeigniter - how to reuse code to generate a block of HTML

Question

I think I might be approaching this in the wrong way, so I would appreciate any comments/guidance. Hopefully I can explain coherently enough what I am trying to achieve:

• I want to create a block of HTML (e.g. a box containing a user's profile), which I will load as part of my layout on most pages that I generate.

• I would also like to be able to re-generate the content within this box on its own from a separate URL. This is so I can update the box with an AJAX call.

• I don't want to duplicate the code that creates this HTML.

I appreciate that I could initally load this box using an AJAX call, but that would seem to me to add an unnecessary call to the server?

The way I thought I could do it is by having a method in my controller that just renders this block of HTML, but how would I then request the output from this method within another controller / view?

How would you approach this?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Create a view to generate the block of HTML for the user's profile and call it from your controller using:

$user_html = $this->load->view('user_view', $user_data, true);

The third parameter returns the view as a string instead of displaying it. This can then be passed into another view in the usual way.

$data['user_block'] = $user_html;
$this->load->view('page_view', $data);