How to render view in subfolder PHP

Question

I am new to MVC and just started practicing with it. I am creating a small to medium size corporate website and did not want to use any big frameworks so I found this and so far it is working pretty well. The only thing that I don't seem to understand is how to render a view in a subfolder.

I have 3 medicines I need to display info for and they are structured like this:

views
--medicines
----medicine1
------info.php
------forms
--------male.php
--------female.php

Here is the medicine controller:

<?php

class MedicinesController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Construct this object by extending the basic Controller class
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();

        Auth::checkAuthentication();
    }

    /**
     * Handles what happens when user moves to URL/medicines/index
     **/
    public function index()
    {
        $this->View->render('medicines/index');
    }

    /**
     * Handles what happens when user moves to URL/medicines/medicine1
     **/
    public function medicine1()
    {
        $this->View->render('medicines/medicine/info', array(
            'files' => FilesModel::getMedicineFiles())
        );
    }

    /**
     * Handles what happens when user moves to URL/medicines/medicine1/forms/male
     **/
    public function male()
    {
        $this->View->render('medicines/imnovid/forms/male');
    }

}

This is the class that handles controllers:

/**
 * Class Application
 * The heart of the application
 */
class Application
{
    /** @var mixed Instance of the controller */
    private $controller;

    /** @var array URL parameters, will be passed to used controller-method */
    private $parameters = array();

    /** @var string Just the name of the controller, useful for checks inside the view ("where am I ?") */
    private $controller_name;

    /** @var string Just the name of the controller's method, useful for checks inside the view ("where am I ?") */
    private $action_name;

    /**
     * Start the application, analyze URL elements, call according controller/method or relocate to fallback location
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        // create array with URL parts in $url
        $this->splitUrl();

        // creates controller and action names (from URL input)
        $this->createControllerAndActionNames();

        // does such a controller exist ?
        if (file_exists(Config::get('PATH_CONTROLLER') . $this->controller_name . '.php')) {

            // load this file and create this controller
            // example: if controller would be "car", then this line would translate into: $this->car = new car();
            require Config::get('PATH_CONTROLLER') . $this->controller_name . '.php';
            $this->controller = new $this->controller_name();

            // check for method: does such a method exist in the controller ?
            if (method_exists($this->controller, $this->action_name)) {
                if (!empty($this->parameters)) {
                    // call the method and pass arguments to it
                    call_user_func_array(array($this->controller, $this->action_name), $this->parameters);
                } else {
                    // if no parameters are given, just call the method without parameters, like $this->index->index();
                    $this->controller->{$this->action_name}();
                }
            } else {
                // load 404 error page
                require Config::get('PATH_CONTROLLER') . 'ErrorController.php';
                $this->controller = new ErrorController;
                $this->controller->error404();
            }
        } else {
            // load 404 error page
            require Config::get('PATH_CONTROLLER') . 'ErrorController.php';
            $this->controller = new ErrorController;
            $this->controller->error404();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Get and split the URL
     */
    private function splitUrl()
    {
        if (Request::get('url')) {

            // split URL
            $url = trim(Request::get('url'), '/');
            $url = filter_var($url, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL);
            $url = explode('/', $url);

            // put URL parts into according properties
            $this->controller_name = isset($url[0]) ? $url[0] : null;
            $this->action_name = isset($url[1]) ? $url[1] : null;

            // remove controller name and action name from the split URL
            unset($url[0], $url[1]);

            // rebase array keys and store the URL parameters
            $this->parameters = array_values($url);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Checks if controller and action names are given. If not, default values are put into the properties.
     * Also renames controller to usable name.
     */
    private function createControllerAndActionNames()
    {
        // check for controller: no controller given ? then make controller = default controller (from config)
        if (!$this->controller_name) {
            $this->controller_name = Config::get('DEFAULT_CONTROLLER');
        }

        // check for action: no action given ? then make action = default action (from config)
        if (!$this->action_name or (strlen($this->action_name) == 0)) {
            $this->action_name = Config::get('DEFAULT_ACTION');
        }

        // rename controller name to real controller class/file name ("index" to "IndexController")
        $this->controller_name = ucwords($this->controller_name) . 'Controller';
    }
}

Config

/**
 * Configuration for: Folders
 * Usually there's no reason to change this.
 */
'PATH_CONTROLLER' => realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../../') . '/application/controller/',
'PATH_VIEW' => realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../../') . '/application/view/',

/**
 * Configuration for: Default controller and action
 */
'DEFAULT_CONTROLLER' => 'index',
'DEFAULT_ACTION' => 'index',

And the render

public function render($filename, $data = null)
{
    if ($data) {
        foreach ($data as $key => $value) {
            $this->{$key} = $value;
        }
    }

    require Config::get('PATH_VIEW') . '_templates/header.php';
    require Config::get('PATH_VIEW') . $filename . '.php';
    require Config::get('PATH_VIEW') . '_templates/footer.php';
}

EDIT

If I do var_dump(); I get this output:

    D:\Programs\wamp64\www\ermp.ee\application\core\Application.php:84:
object(Application)[3]
  private 'controller' => null
  private 'parameters' => 
    array (size=2)
      0 => string 'forms' (length=5)
      1 => string 'male' (length=4)
  private 'controller_name' => string 'medicines' (length=9)
  private 'action_name' => string 'imnovid' (length=7)

Answer 1

Simple urls

When you access http://ermp.ee/medicines/, it renders application/view/medicines/index.php file due to the following line:

$this->View->render('medicines/index');

When you access http://ermp.ee/medicines/medicine1/forms/male it renders application/view/medicines/info.php file with files param due to

$this->View->render('medicines/medicine/info'... 

You pass the view filename directly to View. forms and male are stored in Application's private property parameters.

In this case controller_name is MedicinesController, action_name is medicine1.

URLs with male

When you access http://ermp.ee/medicines/male, controller_name is MedicinesController, action_name is male, but the view rendered is medicines/imnovid/forms/male.php because of the following line:

$this->View->render('medicines/imnovid/forms/male');

No matter what is the path to a view, action_name is got from URI. It is just a convention to use path according to action name, you are free to render whatever you want.

Answer 2

From what I read in the Github repository you linked to, if you want to render a view that is stored in a subdirectory, you should be able to do so by using forward slashes in the filename passed to render().

In the controller, to render info.php, you could call

$this->View->render('medicines/medicine1/info');