zend 2: Unable to render template ... resolver could not resolve to a file

Question

I'm going through the zend 2 getting started tutorial and I hit a wall. I am at the point in the tutorial where my action controller loads a view via the indexAction():

public function indexAction() {
    return new ViewModel(array(
        //$albums inside index.phtml will contain data from this method
        'albums' => $this->getAlbumTable()->fetchAll()
    ));
}

But when loading the page I see this error:

Zend\View\Renderer\PhpRenderer::render: Unable to render template "album/album/index"; resolver could not resolve to a file

At this point I realized I don't know what the hell is happening. I don't even know where to begin troubleshooting this error. Before I scan all of the files for typos I'd really like to understand how this error can occur.

here is my modul.config.php:

<?php
return array(
    'controllers' => array(
        'invokables' => array(
            'Album\Controller\Album' => 
            'Album\Controller\AlbumController',
        ),
    ),

    'router' => array(
        'routes' => array(
            'album' => array(
                'type' => 'segment',
                'options' => array(
                    'route' => '/album[/:action][/:id]',
                    'constraints' => array(
                        'action' => '[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*',
                        'id' => '[0-9]+',
                    ),
                    'defaults' => array(
                        'controller' => 'Album\Controller\Album',
                        'action' => 'index',
                    ),
                ),
            ),
        ),
    ),

    'view_manager' => array(
        'template_path_stack' => array(
            'ablum' => __DIR__ . '/../view',
        ),
    ),
);

Answer 1

The error Unable to render template "album/album/index means that you have to add the index.phtml file under the /album/album directory under the Album module's view directory. The index.phtml view template file is used for rendering the view for the index action of the AlbumController controller of the Album module. Because this file seems to be missing, the view template resolver couldn't find it.

In Zend Framework 2, you implement a view as a template file, which is a file having .phtml extension ("phtml" stands for PHP+HTML). View templates have such a name because they usually contain HTML code mixed with PHP code snippets used for rendering the web pages. Views typically live inside of the view subdirectory of the module.

For beginner, I would recommend to read the Using Zend Framework 2 book. With this e-Book, you can save your time and efforts learning ZF2.

Answer 2

Also, the path is case sensitive i.e. it should be all be in lowercase album/index/index both folders' name and index.phtml else phpRenderer will not be able to trace the view file and render it.