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Kohana PHP 3.0 (KO3) Tutorial Part 3

December 30, 2009 ellisgl

Welcome to the third part in this series on how to develop with Kohana PHP V3 (KO3). If you haven’t read the first and/or second parts yet, I would click here and read them before going on. In this tutorial we will be going over how to create a template.

In the last tutorial, we went over views and in this one we are going to extend the Controller classes which will allow us to create a template. A template, you might ask, is nothing more than a view that is more or less your base (X)HTML code. This will allow to keep things “DRY” in the view world. Before we get to putting code into a file, lets create a new directory under “/application/views/” named “templates”. Now open up your favorite IDE and make a new file and put the following into it:
[php]
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”en-us” />
<title><?php echo $title;?></title>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”<?php echo $meta_keywords;?>” />
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php echo $meta_description;?>” />
<meta name=”copyright” content=”<?php echo $meta_copywrite;?>” />
<?php foreach($styles as $file => $type) { echo HTML::style($file, array(‘media’ => $type)), “n”; }?>
<?php foreach($scripts as $file) { echo HTML::script($file, NULL, TRUE), “n”; }?>
</head>
<body>
<div id=”container”>
<?php echo $header;?>
<?php echo $content;?>
<?php echo $footer;?>
</div>
</body>
</html>
[/php]
Save the above as “default.php” in your “/application/views/templates/” folder.

As you can see the above pretty much looks like a view we have done before, a bit more expanded. I will go over the “foreach” a little bit later. Unlike a view, this will most likely be used by all of your project. Since we will point to this file for our template, or shell, this will reduce the amount of code you have to put in each view, keeping thing separated, easier to maintain, or basically “DRY”.

Now that we have a template, our system isn’t going to do anything with it until well tell it to use it. So lets go back to our IDE and create a new file and put the following into it:
[php]
<?php
defined(‘SYSPATH’) or die(‘No direct script access.’);

class Controller_DefaultTemplate extends Controller_Template
{
public $template = ‘templates/default’;

/**
* Initialize properties before running the controller methods (actions),
* so they are available to our action.
*/
public function before()
{
// Run anything that need ot run before this.
parent::before();

if($this->auto_render)
{
// Initialize empty values
$this->template->title = ”;
$this->template->meta_keywords = ”;
$this->template->meta_description = ”;
$this->template->meta_copywrite = ”;
$this->template->header = ”;
$this->template->content = ”;
$this->template->footer = ”;
$this->template->styles = array();
$this->template->scripts = array();
}
}

/**
* Fill in default values for our properties before rendering the output.
*/
public function after()
{
if($this->auto_render)
{
// Define defaults
$styles = array(‘assets/css/reset.css’ => ‘screen’);
$scripts = array(‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js’);

// Add defaults to template variables.
$this->template->styles = array_reverse(array_merge($this->template->styles, $styles));
$this->template->scripts = array_reverse(array_merge($this->template->scripts, $scripts));
}

// Run anything that needs to run after this.
parent::after();
}
}
[/php]
And save this as “defaulttemplate.php” under your “/application/classes/controller/” folder.

The above code extends the “Controller_Template” class and does three main things, initialize some properties (variables) to be accessable by our methods (actions) and appends default values to them and then gets associates them to our template variables before we render the final output to the screen. This is where the foreach() loop in the template comes into play. The foreach() loop uses a static method for the helper class “HTML” to load CSS style sheets and load JS files. Both of these helper methods will iterate through an array and properly wrap it in the appropriate tag. They can take a path or a URL.

You might be wondering what a “Helper” is, so here is a quick definition from the Kohana PHP 2.x documents:

Helpers are simply “handy” functions that help you with development.

Helpers are similar to library methods, but there is a subtle difference. With a library, you have to create an instance of the library’s class to use its methods. Helpers are declared as static methods of a class, so there is no need to instantiate the class. You can think of them as “global functions”.

As with libraries, the helper classes are automatically loaded by the framework when they are used, so there is no need to load them yourself.

OK, back on course. You might have noticed there is a reference to “assets/css/reset.css”, so lets go ahead and get that in place. In your root create a folder named “assets” and in that folder create one named “css”. For the actual “reset.css” file, I went to Serene Destiny and copied the code from the article titled “Create The Perfect CSS Reset” into a file and saved it as “reset.css” in the “assets/css/” folder. You might want to also set up some other folders within “/assets/”, maybe “images”, “js” and “files”. Basically the assets folder should be used to store and organize static files and such.

At this point, our application still doesn’t know what to do what we have done, so we need to modify our controller. So open “/application/classes/controller/ko3.php”.
We want to change what class we are extending, so change the line:
[php]class Controller_Ko3 extends Controller[/php]
to:
[php]lass Controller_Ko3 extends Controller_DefaultTemplate[/php]

We also need to change up our “index” action (action_index() method) to look like the following:
[php]
public function action_index()
{
$ko3_inner = array();
$ko3 = array();
$this->template->title = ‘Kohana 3.0′;

View::set_global(‘x’, ‘This is a global variable’);

$ko3_inner['content'] = ‘We have more data’;
$ko3['content'] = ‘We have data’;
$ko3['ko3_inner'] = View::factory(‘blocks/ko3_inner’, $ko3_inner)
->render();
$this->template->content = View::factory(‘pages/ko3′, $ko3);
}
[/php]
Save it. Now you might noticed that we now have “$this->template->title = ‘Kohana 3.0′;”, this will assign a value to our templates “title” variable. The next thing you might notice is the absence of the last “render()” method. The “factory()” method actually will “auto render” it to our template’s “content” variable. Pretty simple, yes?

There is something we should probably do before loading up the page, so load up the “ko3.php” view file located in “application/views/pages/”. You might noticed that we have all the “shell” code in our view, so lets remove it. What you should only have in the view file is this:
[php]
<h1>This is my first view</h1>
<?php echo $content;?>
<?php echo $ko3_inner; ?>
<br/><?php echo $x;?>
[/php]

Now if you load it up, you should see that page has a title of “Kohana 3.0″ and the page should pretty much look the same as it did from the last tutorial. If you view the source thou, it would look much different. But you might be wondering about the other variables in the template and what to do with them. OK, let go back and edit our “index” action again. Make it look like:
[php]
public function action_index()
{
$ko3_inner = array();
$ko3 = array();
$this->template->title = ‘Kohana 3.0′;
$this->template->meta_keywords = ‘PHP, Kohana, KO3, Framework’;
$this->template->meta_description = ‘A test of of the KO3 framework’;
$this->template->styles = array(‘assets/css/red.css’ => ‘screen’);
$this->template->scripts = array(‘assets/js/jqtest.js’);

View::set_global(‘x’, ‘This is a global variable’);

$ko3_inner['content'] = ‘We have more data’;
$ko3['content'] = ‘We have data’;
$ko3['ko3_inner'] = View::factory(‘blocks/ko3_inner’, $ko3_inner)
->render();
$this->template->content = View::factory(‘pages/ko3′, $ko3);
}
[/php]
Pretty simple. You will notice I didn’t fill in the header or footer. I’m sure you know what to do there. Hint: Render a view to that variable =). Another thing you might notice is that I have put in “assets/css/red.css” and “assets/css/jqtest.js”. Lets make those two files starting with “/assets/css/red.css”:
[php]
h1
{
color: #FF0000;
}
[/php]

Next “/assets/js/jqtest.js”:
[php]
$(“document”).ready(function()
{
alert(‘Hello Kohana!’);
});
[/php]

Save them and refresh the site. You should see an alert pop up and the first line of text in red.

Today we have created a template file, extended a template controller and our controller use that template file. There is a lot of potential with what you could do with this already. So until next time when I will go over models, happy coding!
Sources used: Unofficial Kohana 3 Wiki, Kohana PHP 2.x Docs

Part 2 | Part 4

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Comments and Reviews:

IK
December 31, 2009 at 10:10 am

Thanks for these wonderful introductions to KO3... Eagerly awaiting the next part
Reply
ellisgl
January 2, 2010 at 2:03 am

IK, thanks for the comment. I will hopefully start working on part four soon. I hope to make this a long series of tutorials that will cover all sorts of topics with KO3.
Reply
Adrian
January 7, 2010 at 11:33 am

Hi Ellis, This is great stuff. I look forward to all the future tutorials. One note, the code examples are partially hidden by the tag cloud. Can you provide a download version, or change the overflow so we can see them? Thanks.
Reply
ellisgl
January 7, 2010 at 11:37 am

Ardian: http://images.dealtaker.com/dealtaker/blog/ko3-tutorial/mykohana3_3.zip
Reply
Timothy
January 19, 2010 at 1:59 am

part 4?
Reply
Timothy
January 19, 2010 at 1:59 am

thanks for this tut! superb!
Reply
ellisgl
January 19, 2010 at 9:08 am

Timothy, I hope to have it out by the end of the week.
Reply
ellisgl
January 22, 2010 at 9:25 am

OK it's going to be next week.
Reply
ellisgl
January 29, 2010 at 9:27 am

Monday Monday Monday! Part four will be out Monday morning. Sorry for the delay all.
Reply
ellisgl
February 1, 2010 at 1:24 pm

Part 4: http://www.dealtaker.com/blog/2010/02/01/kohana-php-3-0-ko3-tutorial-part-4/
Reply
Aza
February 1, 2010 at 3:38 pm

Thanks for your great tutorials! I'm new to kohana and on part-3, I can display the views independently on a web-server. The html parts show correctly but variables don't seem to be read from controller. What could be the cause?
Reply
ellisgl
February 2, 2010 at 8:44 am

Did part 2 work?
Reply
Aza
February 2, 2010 at 2:05 pm

No, if I can just rephrase my question: My bootstrap has only 1 route at the moment the default. So the welcome.php page can be displayed by just pointing to my base url. But I can't run any other controller as a webpage (No direct script access, which makes sense). So how do I request my controllers in a manner that KO3 will understand? Thanks again Aza
Reply
Aza
February 3, 2010 at 7:00 pm

Sorry guys, I was using physical directories as my uri instead of using base_url/index.php/controller/action. Now all works like charm :-)
Reply
ellisgl
February 4, 2010 at 8:42 am

Aza: Glad you got it working. I thought I had commented earlier, but I guess I forgot to hit post (doh!).
Reply
dhaneesh
April 3, 2010 at 6:32 am

Nice Tutorial,Congrats.. Could I get the part 2 of the tutorial
Reply
ellisgl
April 5, 2010 at 8:14 am

@Dhaneesh: http://www.dealtaker.com/blog/tag/ko3/
Reply
Tomek
April 21, 2010 at 5:40 am

Hi, Does this line is correct? (in public function action_index): $this->template->scripts = array('assets/js/jqtest.js', NULL, TRUE); This line generates additional lines of script with nonsense values. It should be like this in my opinion: $this->template->scripts = array('assets/js/jqtest.js'); Tomek
Reply
Jay
May 2, 2010 at 1:03 am

Thanks for the tuts!
Reply
- ellisgl
  May 3, 2010 at 9:35 am
  
  @Jay: No problem!
  Reply
TJ
May 12, 2010 at 11:47 am

Why can the assets folder NOT be a subfolder within the application folder, given the appropriate changes to the paths in the ko3.php controller file for the css and js files? Using Firebug, the result can be seen to be a bunch of kohana code scripted into or in place of those files? Very odd behavior.
Reply
ellisgl
May 12, 2010 at 12:02 pm

@TJ: You could put the assets folder pretty much anywhere you want. I put it in the doc root for a couple reasons, which are: 1. Less to type, which saves a couple bytes off your rendered output (Penny pinching bandwidth) 2. Doesn't give too much information about your directory layout of your system. 3. I see assets as things that are not usually processed by the framework (Image, JS, PDF, Flash, etc.).
Reply
Geoff
May 13, 2010 at 1:28 am

Just thought I'd point out the CSS Reset link has rot. It's now here http://serenedestiny.com/blog/web-development/lets-create-the-perfect-css-reset/ Very helpful.
Reply
ellisgl
May 13, 2010 at 7:51 am

@Geoff: Thanks for the update. I'll update the post with the correct link.
Reply
TJ
May 13, 2010 at 10:49 am

@ellisgl: Your items 1-3 are sound, but rudimentary; they're not news and I certainly agree with them. However, the point I was trying to make is that K3 is processing the the CSS href differently than in K2. With a doc root pointing at the Kohana installation folder (where example.htaccess, index.php, and install.php are placed by default), it is not possible in K3 to place an assets folder (with .css and .js files) in the application (or module, or system) folder(s). Firebug shows that K3 fills the CSS href instead with an error page. K3 is trying to find a controller based on the href asset path. This doesn't happen in K2, which has no problem finding the assets. I tried this from scratch K2 and K3 installations. I came across this issue while working your tutorials. I'm considering ditching K2 and moving to K3, so I was evaluating K3 and came across this issue. It was perplexing at first. The default Kohana structure is not what I use for my Kohana environment. Typically, for a single K2 installation that serves multiple sites, I create an applications (plural) folder as a sibling to Kohana's module and system folders. Then the Kohana application (singular) folder -- duplicated one for each app being served and renamed -- becomes its child(ren). The doc root for each app is then created under the applications/{appfolder}/, where the assets and publicly facing content resides. I found this structure also fixes the K3 asset issue I ran across. Thanks for the tutorials. Very helpful!
Reply
ellisgl
May 13, 2010 at 2:48 pm

@TJ: Ah, I see. Yeah I hadn't try a multi site setup yet.
Reply
Mathias
June 8, 2010 at 10:47 am

Hello Thank you for an excellent part of the tutorial very interesting. There's a mistake in the tutorial. This line: $this->template->scripts = array('assets/js/jqtest.js', NULL, TRUE); is incorrect. Indeed we must change this line: $this->template->scripts = array('assets/js/jqtest.js'); default.php and edit the file to have the line: echo html::script($file, NULL, TRUE). "ntt"; Don't forget to check your bootstrap.php for 'index_file' => '#Put your folder name here#';
Reply
ellisgl
June 23, 2010 at 9:42 pm

@Mathias & @Tomek: I'll get this corrected. Thanks!
Reply
Tom
August 2, 2010 at 9:44 am

Hi, I'm trying to complete this part of the tutorial but to no avail. Although all the data is fine I keep getting this error (from log): ERROR: ErrorException [ 1 ]: Class 'Controller_DafaultTemplate' not found ~ APPPATHclassescontrollerko3.php [ 4 ]
Reply
ellisgl
August 2, 2010 at 11:46 am

@Tom: "Controller_DafaultTemplate" -- Looks like a typ-o - should be "Controller_DefaultTemplate" --- e instead of a
Reply
Dmitry
August 17, 2010 at 10:06 pm

Can you explain why you use array_reverse(array_merge($this->template->styles, $styles)) instead of simply array_merge($styles, $this->template->styles))? Thanks a lot. Great tutorials.
Reply
EllisGL
August 19, 2010 at 1:45 pm

@Dmitry: The order in which css is loaded dictates what is used. If you set up a style for an h1 and your reset style sheet is loaded after, the reset would override your h1 style.
Reply
thiago tanaka
September 23, 2010 at 11:26 am

thanks!!
Reply
Dragan
November 29, 2010 at 6:07 am

It is still very nice, but, after editing 'action_index, output is: ErrorException [ Strict ]: Creating default object from empty value I have removed Title tag...
Reply
Dragan
November 29, 2010 at 6:14 am

Ok, Problem solved, thanks anyway
Reply
newbieme
January 6, 2011 at 7:08 pm

Thanks a lot... It really help me a lot... good way of making tutorials ... easy to understand specially for those who are starter like me... really appreciate what you're doing
Reply
civic
January 14, 2011 at 8:54 am

Hi EllisGL , Thanks for this awesome tutorial. I am new to framework and stated to use kohana 3, I found this tutorial very useful. While working on this part, The js did not work for me when I use, HTML::script($file, NULL, TRUE) in my default.php But works only if I use, HTML::script($file, NULL, FALSE) or HTML::script($file) in my default.php I am using Kohana 3.0.9. Is there any explanation for this as this works other way round for you. Thanks
Reply
icflorescu
January 17, 2011 at 9:58 am

@civic: Noticed the same here on Kohana 3.0.9... Don't really have an explanation, but: If you look at HTML::script($file, array $attributes = NULL, $index = FALSE) method signature, you'll see that the 3rd parameters ($index, defaults to FALSE) means "include the index page". Ellis wrote this tutorial in December 2009... Probably there's a minor change in Kohana's core files from 3.0.1 to 3.0.9...
Reply
icflorescu
January 17, 2011 at 10:25 am

@Dmitry & @EllisGL: But why reverse it when you can simply do: $this->template->styles = array_merge($styles, $this->template->styles); $this->template->scripts = array_merge($scripts, $this->template->scripts);
Reply
Bahador Biglari
February 2, 2011 at 11:09 pm

Hi Thanks for your amazing tutorial; however, I am stuck in css and js ones, since the do not affect my webpage. Could you help me to figure it our?? Thanks again,
Reply
Amarnath Reddy B
March 28, 2011 at 12:44 am

Enter your comment here.
Reply
Danté Bell
April 18, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Hi All, I installed k03 in my doc root for this website, real dir /var/www/web10/web and am having issues with finding the 'assets/css/red.css' file in this tutorial. Here's what I see in the ko3 log file: HTTP_Exception_404 [ 404 ]: Unable to find a route to match the URI: assets/css/reset.css ~ SYSPATH/classes/kohana/request.php [ 743 ] and rewrite log shows: [www.dantesinfernophotography.com/sid#7f4d68bb5dc0][rid#7f4d68f04660/subreq] (1) [perdir /var/www/dantesinfernophotography.com/web/] pass through /var/www/dantesinfernophotography.com/web/assets/css/red.css which is the correct directory (dantesinfernophotography is a soft link to web10). Not sure what to look at here. Help! Thx
Reply
Leonardo Gutierrez
June 26, 2011 at 8:57 pm

Excelent tutorial, It's really usefull for my development.
Reply
Clivtosaurus
July 4, 2011 at 4:58 am

Very Nice Tutorial! Thx so much
Reply
Cyphex
July 28, 2011 at 11:22 am

Nothing seems to ECHO for me unless I explicitly type in before the $view = View::factory('pages/ko3',$ko3); / IE: echo $view = View::factory('pages/ko3',$ko3);
Reply
Lonnie
October 18, 2011 at 3:11 am

Out of the frying pan and into the fire
Reply
xlotl
December 8, 2011 at 6:13 am

Jeebus this is hard to read.
Reply

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Kohana PHP 3.0 (KO3) Tutorial Part 3

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