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Dynamic Footers
#1

[eluser]wdcci[/eluser]
Hello Everyone. I just wanted to say that so far I love Code Igniter's and this forum as well. Great posts!

I am new to Code Igniter and the idea of using a MVC system. I am working on a project that requires me to create a dynamic footer that consists of 4 columns (retail, professional, health, public services) of category specific businesses displaying the company name as a link to an internal company page. This information needs to be database driven as they will add new businesses. I would like to have a template or an include that calls this information when needed (on every page actually). I don't see how I can do this without having to call the same model and load the results into the variables inside every function in my controller class. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.
#2

[eluser]valarkin[/eluser]
Hello wdcci, welcome to the CI forums and to CI itself!

What I would do is create a post controller hook that would append that data to what is in your display. This way the logic and code is in a single place and it allows you to have a cleaner controller. You can read up more on hooks in the user manual here: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-gui...hooks.html.

Later
#3

[eluser]Pascal Kriete[/eluser]
There are a million ways of doing this. I would probably create a library to generate the output, autoload the library, and then call the proper function in the footer view.

A similar approach to the post controller hook would be to create an extended controller and give it an _output function (_output is automatically called after your controller executes). Then just add the needed code there.
#4

[eluser]wdcci[/eluser]
Thanks for all of the great answers. How would I go about calling the function from my view?
#5

[eluser]valarkin[/eluser]
Edit: Ah, well it helps if I reread the post before jumping to conclusions. Smile
#6

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
With PHP.

Code:
<?php print call_function() ?> or  <?php print $this->library->call_method() ?>

I'm not so sure appending content in the _output() method will work, because you don't want to end up with

Code:
&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html><div id="footer">...</div>
#7

[eluser]wdcci[/eluser]
I am still having a problem with this. My PHP skills are fairly undeveloped, so bear with me.

I have a library called Includes that contains the following:

Code:
&lt;?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Includes {


   function footer_find_merchants()
   {

      $CI =& get_instance();

      $CI->load->model('includes_model');

      $data['retail']       = $CI->includes_model->find_categories(1);
      $data['consumer']     = $CI->includes_model->find_categories(2);
      $data['resturant']    = $CI->includes_model->find_categories(3);
      $data['professional'] = $CI->includes_model->find_categories(4);

      return $data;
   }


}

?&gt;

This class is automatically loaded in the autoload.php file.


Inside my view I try and call the the function with the following:

Code:
&lt;?php print $this->includes->footer_find_merchants(); ?&gt;



I get the following error when I run the page:

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Notice

Message: Undefined variable: retail

Filename: includes/footer.php

Line Number: 21

(Line 21)
Code:
&lt;?php foreach ($retail->result() as $row): ?&gt;
                  <li><a >url; ?&gt;" target="_blank">&lt;?php echo $row->merchant_name; ?&gt;</a></li>
               &lt;?php endforeach; ?&gt;


I understand something is off, i'm just not sure how to fix it.

When i add

Code:
$data = $this->includes->footer_find_merchants();
$this->load->view('home_index',$data);

to my controller, it works just fine. This defeats what I'm trying to do. I would like to just call the function from the footer that way I have just once maintain the code form the libray, the footer view and my model. Any help would be great. Thanks.
#8

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
There is a serious flaw in your logic.

Code:
&lt;?php print $this->includes->footer_find_merchants(); ?&gt;

This is going to literally print 'Array', because all you return from that method is an array.

Then you're trying to access $retail, when it is actually in $data['retail'] (actually, it's no where in the context of your View file). The reason it works from your controller is because $data is being extracted by the load->view() method into $retail, $consumer, $restaurant, $professional
#9

[eluser]eilrahc[/eluser]
wdcci: I asked a very similar question question a week or two ago. The solution in my case was using Colin's Template library.

I created a master template which contained the markup for a header, message area, content area, and footer. Then I simply write content to a region in the template with code like:

Code:
// Write some text into the 'page_title' region of the template
$this->template->write('page_title', 'Spiffy Title');
// Write another view into the 'content' region of the template, passing $data to it
$this->template->write_view('content', 'spiffy_view', $data);
// Send the completed markup to the browser
$this->template->render();

I don't know if the Template library is suitable for all projects, but so far I really dig it for mine. It drastically cut down the amount of repetition in my views at the cost of a few extra lines in my controller.




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