Question

I have been pouring over Zend_View and the various classes and interfaces that make up the view. One thing I am attempting to replicate in a project that does not use zend in any way shape or form is the:

$this->view->variable = 'Hello world';

that you can set in a controller and then do:

echo $this->view->variable;

My ultimate goal is to do something like:

$this->variable = new SomeClass

and then else where, in a view specifically, do:

$this->variable->someMethod();

My question is:

• How would I replicate what zend does to do something simmilar with out using global variables?
• How is zend able to do something like $this->view with out ever instantiating or saying what view is?

this would help me understand how, variables are passed around or objects are passed from the logic to the view and how php allows for something like $this->view to work when in a view or not.

note: this is not a Zend specific question and “use zend” is not the answer. I am looking to replicate a specific feature. My project does not in any way use or affiliate with zend.

Answer 1

It’s actually pretty simple. When you use include, require, eval et al., the loaded code is brought in to the current scope. So if you have a template file

template.php

<span><?=$this->view->somevar?></span>

Controller.php

<?php
class Controller
{
    private $view;

    public function doSomething()
    {
        $this->view->somevar = 'Hello World';
        include 'template.php';
    }
}

index.php

<?php
require 'Controller.php';
$oC = new Controller();
$oC->doSomething();

Blamo.., template.php is able to call $this->view->somevar as it is treated as part of Controller.php. Running php index.php on the CLI produces

<span>Hello World</span>

To elaborate a tiny bit, if $this->view inside of Controller.php were a class you’ve defined rather than a simple instance of stdClass as in the above demonstration, and it had a function someMethod, you could call $this->view->someMethod() from template.php just the same.