Class: AkActionView  - X-Ref

Action View templates can be written in two ways. If the template file has a +.tpl+ extension then it uses PHP.

= PHP

You trigger PHP by using embeddings such as <? ?>, <?php ?> and <?= ?>. The difference is whether you want output or not. Consider the
following loop for names:

<b>Names of all the people</b>
<?php foreach($people as $person) : ?>
Name: <?=$person->name ?><br/>
<?php endforeach ?>

== Using sub templates

Using sub templates allows you to sidestep tedious replication and extract common display structures in shared templates. The
classic example is the use of a header and footer (even though the Action Pack-way would be to use Layouts):

<?= $controller->render("shared/header") ?>
Something really specific and terrific
<?= $controller->render("shared/footer") ?>

As you see, we use the output embeddings for the render methods. The render call itself will just return a string holding the
result of the rendering. The output embedding writes it to the current template.

But you don't have to restrict yourself to static includes. Templates can share variables amongst themselves by using instance
variables defined using the regular embedding tags. Like this:

<?php $shared->page_title = "A Wonderful Hello" ?>
<?= $controller->render("shared/header") ?>

Now the header can pick up on the $page_title variable and use it for outputting a title tag:

<title><?= $page_title ?></title>

== Passing local variables to sub templates

You can pass local variables to sub templates by using an array with the variable names as keys and the objects as values:

<?= $controller->render("shared/header", array('headline'=>'Welcome','person'=> $person )) ?>

These can now be accessed in shared/header with:

Headline: <?= $headline ?>
First name: <?= $person->first_name ?>


== JavaScriptGenerator ==