First, i should present the way i manage a web page.
I call component every part of page that could be contained in
functional box. Then, header is a component, as there will be a footer
component, a pub component, menu, invisible components as tags, etc..
My layout is just the minimum part of static html that will allow to
display all or some components in a good way.
Layout contains some 'box' or 'place' that will be filled with components.
The trick is to consider the ZF_view as the layout to render, then the
action will only say which components should fill and in which part of
layout.
In this way, the layout will render all components in one pass. To make
a reference to the two step view method, this could be named one step view
or rather one step layout method. An obvious gain is you can render in
one pass as much components as you want.
I implement it without any dev, just ZF RC1 out of box.
Roughly speaking, in the controller init() method, i will set the view
as the layout.
Of course, it could more efficient and easier to use if it was
integrated to viewRenderer. ViewRenderer should had a layout mode, then
we wont have to force
ScriptAction in init() of controller. It could be easily done later.
To go a little farther, i have write a little config file layouts.ini
and a class to parse it where i can tell which layout should be used
depending on module, controller and action.
For each layout, i can also defined a default components list.
#The most specific entry will be choose.
[layouts]
moduleName.layout = layoutName
moduleName.controllerName.layout = layoutName
moduleName.controllerName.actionName.layout = layoutName
# unlisted module will get the default module layout
[components]
layoutName.blocName[] = componentName
...
As i'm not confortable in english, you can find an implementation
example in a zip file below.
This is really basic layouts and components.
http://titerm.free.fr/ZF/samples.zip
In each action, we can
Specify a layout instead default one
Specify what components should go and in which part of layout or accept
default components layout
Give data needed by components if necessary.
Call action helper
In components or layouts, view helpers are available.
I'll answer any question after my holidays.
Thanks.
Laurent
