[eluser]esra[/eluser]
[quote author="lancemonotone" date="1204751032"]OH, yeah...What is the H in HMVC? And where would I find the best info about partial views? I apologize, the more I think the more I think I annoy.
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'H' is for Hierarchial as in Hierarchial-Model-View-Controller. Note that ME is technically not HMVC by any means, so use of that term is misleading. HMVC and MVC are separate architectural design patterns, each of which is based on a collection of subordinate design patterns. ME changes the behavior of the MVC design pattern but does not use the Chain of Resposibility design pattern or Observer pattern to handle inter-module communication. For a detailed description of HMVC by the original authors, read the JavaWorld article announcing the architectural design pattern (i.e., do a web search for 'JavaWorld HMVC').
Matchbox allows CI to support an alternate file system and uses custom routing code designed to route to modules in that alternate file system. It does a few other file system oriented things (study the code).
ME allows a single module to be loaded as a page controller using CI's standard Router library (usual CI-MVC approach). The big distinction between Matchbox and ME is ME's support for simultaneously loading additional MVC triads (modules) within the same template. Those additional MVC triads are loaded into regions within the template without using the Router because the router is not necessary if those additonal MVC triads don't have to be loaded directly via the URL (i.e., no routing is necessary). So in a sense, ME modules have a dual personality--they can behave as a Matchbox module (standard MVC triad loaded from a modular file system) and they can behave like independent widget-like entities which can be loaded at the same time as a module (in various combinations). When a ME module is loaded as a module, it could be said to have focus like in a desktop application because it is loaded via the Router. Any other ME modules loaded as widgets within the same template are loaded rather than routed based on code inserted into template regions. You might note that those widgets could probably populate those regions based on loops inserted into those template regions, assuming that widgets could be assigned to template regions within a database table). Thus, it's possible to associate sets of widgets with various modules (e.g., load forum-specific widgets when routing to a forum and e-commerce widgets when routing to a ecommerce catalog).
Derek Allard wrote a nice tutorial as a forum message shortly after 1.6 was released with a good explanation of how to load multiple view fragments (partial views) using th updated Loader library.
