Question

I have Zend Framework MVC application with module structure like that above:

/application
  /layouts
    /sripts
      /layout.phtml
  /modules
    /default
      /controllers
        /IndexController.php
        /OtherController.php
      /views
        /scripts
          /index
            /index.phtml
            /second.phtml
            /third.phtml
            /fourth.phtml
          /other
            /index.phtml
            /second.phtml
            /third.phtml
            /fourth.phtml

In my layout.phtml i have a line

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

I want to wrap rendered action views in every action of IndexController and OtherController, except fourth, with some code, like <div id='top'></div> at the beggining, and <div id='bottom'></div> at the end of rendered action view.
I don’t want to do it manually in every action view *.phtml file. There are too many in real application, besides code looks messy with that solution.

How to do it?

Answer 1

In a layout file, you can echo a layout variable. This is usually where we put the html rendered by an action. You can append the rendering from several actions into a single layout variable, and they will be displayed in LIFO order. Here is how that variable is inserted into the layout file:

<?php echo $this->layout()->myLayoutVariable; ?>

You can also set up a placeholder variable inside your layout file:

<?php echo $this->placeholder('myPlaceholderVariable'); ?>

In one of your view files, you can then provide the html content for this placeholder variable:

<?php
    $this->placeholder('myPlaceholderVariable')->append('<p>HTML GOES HERE</p>');
?>

If you don’t set any value for the placeholder variable, nothing will be rendered in the layout file. But if you do set a value for that placeholder variable, it will be inserted into the html.