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10-29-2007, 06:18 AM

[eluser]codex[/eluser]
The idea behind MVC is maintainability, dividing scripts into clearly structured parts of code. Pretty good idea in theory, but because I have a lot of if/else and foreaches in my views they tend to look very messy, which can't be good. So I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong. Sort of.

I was just wondering how do you guys do it. Do you take care of the if/else in the controller and push the output to the view? Or are your views also messy?

10-29-2007, 07:32 AM

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
Hi Codex,

What you want in your code is hind-sight!

The way I have opted to use/abuse CodeIgniter is:
1. the page consists of "boxes of data" and each box/div is a separate entity.
2. endeavour to have absolutely no HTML formatting in the view
3. have a separate CSS file containing the look & feel.
4. yes my controller, libraries, models and helpers are messy Sad

View

Code:
&lt;?php echo $header ?&gt;

&lt;body id='&lt;?=$PAGE ?&gt;' &gt;

  <div id='container'>

    <div id='box_title'>

        &lt;?php echo $title ?&gt;

    </div>

    <div id='inner'>

      <br/>

      <div id='box_left'>

        &lt;?php echo $left ?&gt;

      </div>

      <div id='box_center'>

        <div class='btn' style='margin:-0.6em auto 1em'>  

            &lt;?php echo $search ?&gt;

        </div>

        &lt;?php echo j_rndtop()?&gt;

        <h3 class='title_quote title_orange'>&lt;!-- bmp bgb bs1 --&gt;

          &lt;?php echo  $joketitle ?&gt;

        </h3>

        <div id='box_joke'>

          &lt;!-- google_ad_section_start --&gt;

            &lt;?php echo $joke ?&gt;

          &lt;!-- google_ad_section_end --&gt;

        </div>

      </div>&lt;?php /* box_center */ ?&gt;

      <div id='box_right' class='z99'>

          &lt;?php echo  $right ?&gt;&lt;!-- default to Google placing --&gt;

      </div>

      <div id='footer'>

        &lt;?php echo  $footer ?&gt;

      </div>  

      <div id='rndbgt'>

        &lt;?php echo  j_rndbgt(FALSE) ?&gt;

      </div>  

</div>

 <br />

  </div>&lt;?php /* container */ ?&gt;

&lt;/body&gt;

&lt;/html&gt;

 
Cheers,

John_Betong
 

10-29-2007, 08:26 AM

[eluser]codex[/eluser]
[quote author="John_Betong" date="1193682777"]Hi Codex,

What you want in your code is hind-sight!

The way I have opted to use/abuse CodeIgniter is:
1. the page consists of "boxes of data" and each box/div is a separate entity.
2. endeavour to have absolutely no HTML formatting in the view
3. have a separate CSS file containing the look & feel.
4. yes my controller, libraries, models and helpers are messy Sad

View

Code:
&lt;?php echo $header ?&gt;

&lt;body id='&lt;?=$PAGE ?&gt;' &gt;

  <div id='container'>

    <div id='box_title'>

        &lt;?php echo $title ?&gt;

    </div>

    <div id='inner'>

      <br/>

      <div id='box_left'>

        &lt;?php echo $left ?&gt;

      </div>

      <div id='box_center'>

        <div class='btn' style='margin:-0.6em auto 1em'>  

            &lt;?php echo $search ?&gt;

        </div>

        &lt;?php echo j_rndtop()?&gt;

        <h3 class='title_quote title_orange'>&lt;!-- bmp bgb bs1 --&gt;

          &lt;?php echo  $joketitle ?&gt;

        </h3>

        <div id='box_joke'>

          &lt;!-- google_ad_section_start --&gt;

            &lt;?php echo $joke ?&gt;

          &lt;!-- google_ad_section_end --&gt;

        </div>

      </div>&lt;?php /* box_center */ ?&gt;

      <div id='box_right' class='z99'>

          &lt;?php echo  $right ?&gt;&lt;!-- default to Google placing --&gt;

      </div>

      <div id='footer'>

        &lt;?php echo  $footer ?&gt;

      </div>  

      <div id='rndbgt'>

        &lt;?php echo  j_rndbgt(FALSE) ?&gt;

      </div>  

</div>

 <br />

  </div>&lt;?php /* container */ ?&gt;

&lt;/body&gt;

&lt;/html&gt;

 
Cheers,

John_Betong
 [/quote]

Hey John, if all your views look like this I can imagine that the rest IS messy ;-)

But what if you need to loop something like a <ul>?

10-29-2007, 10:52 AM

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
Hi codex,

Quote: But what if you need to loop something like a <ul>?

 
http://johns-jokes.com/joke/five_col
 
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/63078/
 
Check the two links above. The first link was an example for the thread on how to use PHP mod %3.

Notice the replies since there always seems to be an easier way. The expression "standing on the shoulders of giants" springs to mind Smile

Cheers,

John_Betong
 

10-30-2007, 02:45 PM

[eluser]Escee[/eluser]
I got allot of if-elses for checking the array count, looping the array or show a message that there aren't any messages or something. Therefore Smarty has the {foreach else}, after coding a feature like that in the parser class it goes allot easier:

Code:
{if items}

- {item}

{else}

- <i>No items found</i>

{/items}

And you can still use the 'old' way:

Code:
{items}

- {item}

{/items}

The parser class comes in handy at the time :-)

Stefan

10-30-2007, 08:14 PM

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
Hi Escee,

This is how I achieve the if/else statements using PHP.

Code:
// controller

    $data['debug']  = unix_to_human(time());

    $data['header'] = $this->load->view('_header', $data, TRUE);

// view - header.ph[

  &lt;title&gt;&lt;?php echo isset($debug) ? $debug : $htmltitle ?&gt;&lt;/title&gt;

 
I am currently working on a Smarty site, 35,923Kb of zipped source code! The things one has to do to earn some money Sad

 
Cheers,

John_Betong
 