Question

I have started to learn Zend Framework. I have done the quickstart tutorial and the akrabat tutorial.

Now I am trying to work on some of my own project with Zend Framework and it is a frustrating experience to say the least.

I made a layout that creates my standard header that shows up on every page. Now I want to display the user’s name in the header which is retrieved from a mysql database. I don’t know how to go about it. Do I interact with a controller and model from the layout??

Also, are there any other good guides for this kind of information? The zend documentation seems to be very detailed for each component but not very good at explaining how things work together.

Answer 1

Within your layout you will need this

 <?= $this->layout()->content ?>

This will output anything from your view script.

In your project structure you need a controller and a view script for that controller. You should know how to access this if you have done the tutorial.

Your controller should get the username from the DB and assign it to the view like so

 $this->view->username = "John";

Then in your view

 echo $this->username;

EDIT

In your Bootstrap class register a new plugin

 $plugin = new Default_Controller_Plugin_Username();

 Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->registerPlugin($plugin);

This plugin might look like this

class Default_Controller_Plugin_Username 
      extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract 
             implements Lib_Observer_Observable
{
        public function preDispatch(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)        
        {
            //Do things in here to get username

            //Then you can set it in the registry           
            Zend_Registry::set("username", $username);
        }
}