Dynamic Titles in my codeigniter header.php

Question

I have a header.php I'm loading in my controllers for every page. However I want to have dynamic titles for each page. My idea was to pass a $title variable into the view as I'm loading it:

//Home Controller
function index()
{

    $data['title'] = "Dynamic Title";

    $this->load->view('header', $data);
    $this->load->view('layouts/home');
    $this->load->view('footer');

}

and then check for the $title variable in my header.php

<title>
    <?php if ($title)
        { 
            echo $title; 
        }
    else
        { 
            echo 'Default Title'; 
        }
    endif; ?>       
</title>

However this doesn't work and I get a blank page. I think it is my syntax for the header.php but I can't figure out why.

Answer 1

Proper if Syntax

Your syntax on the if-statement is a bit off. You can use either:

if (condition) {
  // do a
} else {
  // do b
}

Or

if (condition) :
  // do a
else : 
  // do b
endif;

You seem to have transposed the ending of the latter onto the former.

Using the Ternary Operator in Title

Once you've made that change, your title can be printed as easily as:

<title><?php echo isset($title) ? $title : 'Default Title' ; ?></title>

Alternative View Loading

Another method of loading views is to work with a single template file:

$data['title'] = 'Foo Bar';
$data['content'] = 'indexPage';

$this->load->view('template', $data);

This loads the template.php file as your view. Within this file you load your subsequent parts:

<?php $this->load->view("_header"); ?>
<?php $this->load->view($content); ?>
<?php $this->load->view("_footer"); ?>

By no means is this necessary, but it may help you maintain brevity in your controller.

Answer 2

Well I would try doing a var dump of $title in the view, just to see if it's getting passed at all.

Also, you don't need "endif;" since you're ending the if statement with the last curly brace.