Question

In the app I’m building, I’d like to have a nice footer with data from the database (tags) and a contact-form. All the parts are scripted, but now I’d like to put them all together.
The elements of the footer are the same for every page loaded, only the content is different.

How can I do this, without having to put too much code on every controller?

Answer 1

Use view helpers. Create a helper for each of the dynamic info, like the tags. And then you can have it’s output directly on the view. This avoids unnecessary code in the controller.

Here’s an example for the tags. Create a Tags.php file containing:

class Zend_View_Helper_Tags extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract {

    public function tags() {
        // build an array with all the tags and return it
    }
}

And now on your footer.phtml you can use this like:

<?php $allTags = $this->tags();
foreach ($allTags as $tag) { ?>
    <a href="<?php echo $tag['url']; ?>"><?php echo $tag['name']; ?></a>
<?php } ?>

You can use partialLoop() to get a cleaner view.