Horde_View

Documentation on the Horde_View package. This documentation is adopted from the MAD documentation (http://framework.maintainable.com/mvc/5_view.php), as many of the Horde View ideas are also adopted from MAD, and the helpers are directly compatible between the two systems.

Example usage

Calling code

<?php

require 'Horde/Autoloader.php';

// use a model to get the data for book authors and titles.

$data = array(

              array(

                    'author' => 'Hernando de Soto',

        'title' => 'The Mystery of Capitalism'

                    ),

              array(

                    'author' => 'Henry Hazlitt',

        'title' => 'Economics in One Lesson'

                    ),

              array(

                    'author' => 'Milton Friedman',

        'title' => 'Free to Choose'

                    )

              );

$view = new Horde_View;

$view->books = $data;

// and render a template called "template.php"

echo $view->render('template.php');

View template

<?php if ($this->books): ?>

<!-- A table of some books. -->

<table>

    <tr>

        <th>Author</th>

        <th>Title</th>

    </tr>

<?php foreach ($this->books as $key => $val): ?>

    <tr>

<td><?php echo $this->escape($val['author']) ?></td>

<td><?php echo $this->escape($val['title']) ?></td>

    </tr>

<?php endforeach; ?>

</table>

<?php else: ?>

    <p>There are no books to display.</p>

<?php endif; ?>

Helpers

Overview

Views separate the presentation from the controllers and models. Views are allowed to have logic, provided that the logic is only for presentation purposes. This presentation logic is small bits of PHP code embedded in the HTML.

Bits of presentation logic code can be extracted into helper methods. Once extracted, a helper method can be called in the view in place of the former code block. Extracting presentation logic into helpers is a best practice and helps views clean and DRY.

Helpers are simply methods of a class. The framework mixes the helpers into the view behind the scenes, and makes the appear as methods inside the view. An example of a helper class with a single highlight() helper follows:

class UsersHelper extends ApplicationHelper

{

    /**

     * Highlight a phrase within the given text

     * @param   string  $text

     * @param   string  $phrase

     * @return  string

     */

    public function highlight($text, $phrase)

    {

        $escaped = $this->h($text);

        $highlighter = '<strong class="highlight">$excaped</strong>';

        if (empty($phrase) || empty($text)) {

            return $text;

        }

        return preg_replace("/($phrase)/", $highlighter, $text);

    }

}

And in the HTML template:

<div><?= $this->highlight($this->var, 'bob') ?><div>

...

It is OK to put HTML into helper class methods because they exist to assist with presentation. However, it is NOT OK to put print/echo statements within a helper class. Helper methods always return a value that is displayed in the view like <?= $this->highlight($text) ?>.

Organization

As shown above, helpers are methods that are organized into classes. The framework will mix helper methods together through overloading. Inside a view, helper methods from all of the sources above be called by simply using <?= $this->helperMethod() ?>.