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Asked: 2026-06-01T20:09:54+00:00

i am using the layouts in zend framework. as if now it looks ugly

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i am using the layouts in zend framework. as if now it looks ugly with lots and lots of code. i would like to know with reference to below code. is it possible for me to make give it a cleaner approach. here is my code.

<!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">
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />
        <title>Administrative Panel</title>
        <link href="/css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/plugins/spinner/ui.spinner.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/plugins/spinner/jquery.mousewheel.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/plugins/forms/uniform.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/custom.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <!-- Left side content -->
        <div id="leftSide">
            <div class="logo"><a href="<?php echo $this->url(array(), 'admin-dashboard'); ?>"><img src="/images/logo.png" alt="" /></a></div>
            <!-- Divider Decorator -->
            <div class="sidebarSep mt0"></div>
            <!-- Search widget -->
            <form action="" class="sidebarSearch">
                <input type="text" name="search" placeholder="search…" id="ac" />
                <input type="submit" value="" />
            </form>
            <!-- Divider Decorator -->
            <div class="sidebarSep"></div>
            <!-- Statistics -->
            <div class="numStats">
                <ul>
                    <li><?php echo $this->itemCount; ?><span>Items</span></li>
                    <li><?php echo $this->categoryCount; ?><span>Categories</span></li>
                    <li class="last"><?php echo $this->userCount; ?><span>Users</span></li>
                </ul>
                <div class="clear"></div>
            </div>
            <!-- Divicer Decorator -->
            <div class="sidebarSep"></div>
            <!-- Sidebar buttons -->
            <a href="#" title="" class="sButton sBlue"><img src="/images/icons/sPlus.png" alt="" /><span>Add new item</span></a>
            <a href="#" title="" class="sButton sRed" style="margin-top: 12px;"><img src="/images/icons/sPlus.png" alt="" /><span>Add new user</span></a>
            <!-- Divider Decorator -->
            <div class="sidebarSep"></div>
            <!-- Left navigation -->
            <?php $this->navigation()->menu()->setPartial(array('partials/sidebar.phtml', 'admin')); echo $this->navigation()->menu()->render(); ?>
        </div>
        <!-- Right side -->
        <div id="rightSide">
            <!-- Top fixed navigation -->
            <?php echo $this->render('topnav.phtml') ?>
            <!-- Title area --> 
            <div class="titleArea"></div>
            <!-- Action Navigation -->
            <?php echo $this->placeholder('action-navigation'); ?>
            <!-- Main content wrapper -->
            <div class="wrapper">
                <?php echo $this->layout()->content ?>
            </div>
            <!-- Footer line -->
            <?php echo $this->render('footer.phtml') ?>
        </div>
        <div class="clear"></div>
    </body>
</html>

i have seen many times, most people uses some helper methods to clean the layout file. from the very own example of zend framework

<!DOCTYPE html
    PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <?php echo $this->headTitle() ?>
    <?php echo $this->headScript() ?>
    <?php echo $this->headStyle() ?>
</head>
<body>
    <?php echo $this->render('header.phtml') ?>

    <div id="nav"><?php echo $this->placeholder('nav') ?></div>

    <div id="content"><?php echo $this->layout()->content ?></div>

    <?php echo $this->render('footer.phtml') ?>
</body>
</html>

they uses some helper methods like 

$this->docType()
$this->headTitle()
$this->headScript()
$this->headStyle()

this approach looks lot more cleaner to me. since they haven’t said much about this in the same documentation. i was wondering what is the exact purpose of that helper methods?. and how can i make use of it in my layout file?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You will find everything you need about View helpers and Placeholders in the manual, especially in this section about concrete implementation of Placeholders.

    Refer to this section of the manual to create your own view helper. A custom view helpers will basically allow you to render some content in HTML using just echo $this->myViewHelperName(); in your layout or any view where you need this content.

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