I can't figure out how to solve this problem i'm facing. Alright, so basically i have a default view/site/index.php view file which is generating the home page. Now i have built two separated Models and their associated Controllers and views. I want to include those view of the controllers in the default home page view i.e. views/site/index.php. Does it make any sense ?
So my home page is divided into several sections. The header and footer parts are the same throughout the whole site, which is why i've written them in the /themes/brushed/layouts folder under separate files. Those are being loaded fine.
The two controller i was talking about are named as FrontPageCategoriesController.php and TopProductsController.php. They are generating their separate view files i.e. index.php in their respective view folders.
How will i include those view files (index.php) into the main site view file (views/site/index.php). I just can't include those files using include_once() because the data is being generated yet by its controller. So whats the way to achieve this ?
Can anyone please help me out with this. Thanks in advance.
First you should move data generation from controller to model. Controller should only wire your input parameters to model and pass it to view. The reason is that you want to reuse models, not controllers. Remember that controller is bound to page request, while model is not.
Then just use your model to fetch the data and renderPartial to render the data. For example:
$categories = FrontPageCategories::model()->findAll();
$this->renderPartial('/frontPageCategories/index', array(
'categories' => $categories,
));
In fact it is possible to fetch categories from model directly in view, if they are not dependant on some parameters in the current page.
Actually, you should use renderPartial for your header and footer too.