Hello, I’m a little new to Yii. I’m wondering what is the best way to pass variables to a layout from an action.
Thanks!
Hello, I’m a little new to Yii. I’m wondering what is the best way to pass variables to a layout from an action.
Thanks!
you can pass it when you call the render method like
$message = 'hello world';
$this->render('view_file',array('message'=>$message));
and in your view_file view file you can echo out the message
<?php echo $message; ?>
Thanks for your response. You can access the variable in a view like a local variable, but not in a layout right? I was asking about passing variables to the default layout.
in controller
public $param = ‘value’;
in layout
echo $this->param
Thanks!
In YII you cannot pass variables to a layout. This is by design.
Layout is a site-wide entity and therefore must not rely on any
particular controller. So, while your approach is working, it’s
not clean in the way of architecture. I recommend you one of the
following:
Implement method of your BaseController.
Reuse CApplication::getParams.
Hi! I had a similar problem because I had to put a banner in the layout… and the banner had to be different in the home page. I solved the problem in this way:
if (($this->id=='site')&&($this->action->id=='index')){
// Here the HOME banner
} else {
// Here the other banners
}
It’s obviously more clean and elegant that using a new variable!
Hello, I have another question…
How can I pass variable from static page file to layout. Like we can set $this->pageTitle in static page file, and then that variable is available in layout. My question is how can I pass another variable?
Thanks.
I recently ran into this problem myself - I’ve inadvertently created a dependency between my controllers and layout, which turns out to be highly impractical, because I have certain controllers I reuse between projects. By creating a dependency on certain properties or methods of your controller to complete your layout, you lose that flexibility.
Seeing the other ideas posted here, I’m thinking I should have used the clips feature. Since we’re dealing with a layout, most likely you’re just trying to have multiple areas you can populate with content, like for example a left, right and center column?
If so, in your view, you should be able to capture a piece of content for the left column, for example, by using $this->beginClip(‘left’) and $this->endClip() … the capture snippet of content is now stored in the $clips collection of your Controller, and should be available when your layout renders.
In your layout, you can then do something like: if ($this->clips->contains(‘left’)) echo $this->clips[‘left’];
Because clips are available in any controller, this is a cleaner approach that does not create any dependecy on any particular controller or base-controller.
Conceivably, you could even use $clips->contains() to make you layout flexible - e.g. if there’s no content for the left column, you might add a class to the <body> tag and CSS that makes your center column wider.
Also note, you don’t need a clip for the center column - as the main content from your view (outside any clip area) will of course still be captured and passed as $content to your layout.
Hope this is useful… personally, I have some refactoring to do myself tomorrow morning… 
For the record, I did my refactoring, and this approach works well.
I was hoping to use beginContent() to actually render the main template from my invidual layouts, but that approach is no good, because the content renders in the context of a widget, so at that point it’s too late to use CClientScript to add your styles and scripts - since the widget renders the template, you also don’t have direct access to clips captured by your controller’s view.
So the approach I ended up with is this.
Here’s a “three-column” layout:
<? $this->beginClip('content'); ?>
<div id="layout-left">
<? Yii::app()->getCategoryList()->run(); ?>
</div>
<div id="layout-center"><?=$content?></div>
<div id="layout-right">
<? Yii::app()->getCalendar()->run(); ?>
</div>
<? $this->endClip(); ?>
<? $this->renderPartial('application.views.layouts._page', $this->clips['content']); ?>
The parent layout is "_page", which goes something like this:
<?php
$cs = Yii::app()->getClientScript();
$cs->registerCoreScript('jquery');
$cs->registerCssFile('/layout/_style.css');
$cs->registerScriptFile('/js/common.js', CClientScript::POS_HEAD);
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title><?= CHtml::encode(Yii::app()->name.' - '.Yii::app()->pageTitle); ?></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<?=Yii::app()->charset?>" />
</head>
<body class="<?=$this->layout?>">
<div id="layout-page">
<div id="layout-header">
...
</div>
<div id="layout-menu"><? Yii::app()->getMenu()->run(); ?></div>
<?php if(Yii::app()->user->hasFlash('success')):?>
<div class="flash flash-success">
<?= Yii::app()->user->getFlash('success'); ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php if(Yii::app()->user->hasFlash('error')):?>
<div class="flash flash-error">
<?= Yii::app()->user->getFlash('error'); ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
<?=$data?>
<br style="clear:both"/>
<div id="layout-footer">
...
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Note how I’m using CController::$layout directly as the class-name for my <body> element.
As you can see, my views have dependencies on a number of widgets, obtained using for example Yii::app()->getMenu() … this is implemented as a behavior, attached to the application - so in my application config:
<?php
return array(
...
'behaviors' => array(
'layout' => 'LayoutBehavior',
),
...
);
The layout behavior adds getMenu() and other pre-configured components required to render my pages, like so:
<?php
/**
* This behavior adds layout-related functions to the application
*/
class LayoutBehavior extends CBehavior
{
public $pageTitle = 'My Fancy Page';
/**
* @return Menu configured Menu Widget for the top menu
*/
public function getMenu()
{
static $menu;
if (!isset($menu)) $menu = Yii::createComponent(array(
'class' => 'Menu',
'id' => 'menu',
'items' => Yii::app()->params['Menu.items'],
));
return $menu;
}
...
}
As you can see, I also took my $pageTitle out of the controller, and placed it in the layout behavior - I can access this as Yii::app()->pageTitle … that was the last and only controller-dependency my layout had, so now it’s completely unshackled and can be rendered from any controller!
Hope this is useful! 
Thx mindplay, that was helpful 
The previous approach:
in controller
public $param = 'value';
in layout
echo $this->param
should NOT be disregarded I believe.
It does the job when you have exactly the same shared elements, with minor changes here and there.
For example:
The same header, with a different color logo for each page.