Partials in lithium

Question

Normally I use the Zend Framework and this is something I miss in Lithium. Partials. There is a render method in the view where you can use 'elements' which is the closest I got.

<?php $this->_render('element', 'form); ?>

This does work, however it requires that the form.html.php file is in the /views/elements folder. Is it possible to let it search in another path? Like /views/users/ so it gets the file /views/users/form.html.php.

I have tried the following, since I found out that the render method does accept an options argument wherein you can specify a path. So I made an Helper to fix this problem for me.

namespace app\extensions\helper;
use lithium\template\TemplateException;

class Partial extends \lithium\template\Helper
{
public function render($name, $folder = 'elements', $data = array())
{
    $path = LITHIUM_APP_PATH . '/views/' . $folder;     
    $options['paths']['element'] = '{:library}/views/' . $folder . '/{:template}.{:type}.php';

    return $this->_context->view()->render(
        array('element' => $name),
        $data,
        $options
    );
}
}

However it still only searches in the /view/elements folder, not in the path I specified.

Is there something I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

Why using plugins when this stuff can hopefully be done by Lithium :-)

I don't know Zend, but here is an exemple to configure elements default paths differently, to load them from the related view folder, instead of a shared path.

And let's add one more thing: we want to differentiate elements/partials from a normal view, by appending un underscore to the name of the file (mimic Rails partials)

First, reconfigure Media during the bootstrap process (config/bootstrap/media.php)

Media::type('default', null, array(
    'view' => 'lithium\template\View',
    'paths' => array(
        'layout' => '{:library}/views/layouts/{:layout}.{:type}.php',
        'template' => '{:library}/views/{:controller}/{:template}.{:type}.php',
        'element'  => array(
            '{:library}/views/{:controller}/_{:template}.{:type}.php',
            '{:library}/views/elements/{:template}.{:type}.php'
        )
    )
));

Then, use it

Suppose a controller Documents. Call on a view:

<?= $this->_render('element', 'foo', $data, array('controller' => 'documents')); ?>

This will look for a file inside views/documents/_foo.html.php and if doesn't exists, fallback to /views/elements/foo.html.php

This kind of simple re-configuration of framework defaults, can be done in Lithium for a bunch of stuffs (default controllers paths to create namespaces, views paths, libraries, etc ...)

One more example to re-maps your template paths so you can have stuff like pages/users_{username}.php instead of the Lithium default: https://gist.github.com/1854561

Answer 2

Fixed it. Works like a charm. Zend like Partials in Lithium.

<?php

namespace app\extensions\helper;

use lithium\template\View;

class Partial extends \lithium\template\Helper
{

    public function render($name, $folder = 'elements', array $data = array())
    {

        $view = new View(array(
            'paths' => array(
                'template' => '{:library}/views/' . $folder . '/' . $name . '.{:type}.php'
            )
        ));

        return $view->render('all', $data);

    }

}

Can be used in templates like:

<?php echo $this->partial->render('filename', 'foldername', compact('foo', 'bar')); ?>