README

nixphp/view

A lightweight, native PHP templating system — with layout inheritance and block support.

This plugin brings a clean, minimal templating system to your NixPHP application. It lets you define base layouts, use content blocks, and safely output user data — all with pure PHP.

🧩 Part of the official NixPHP plugin collection. Install it when you need structured HTML rendering — without external engines like Twig or Blade.

📦 Features

✅ Define layouts and reuse views via setLayout() and block()/endblock()
✅ Render views with view('template', [...])
✅ Return response objects with render('template', [...])
✅ Safe output via s() (escape helper)
✅ Fully native PHP – no new syntax or templating engine required

📥 Installation

composer require nixphp/view

The plugin auto-registers itself and adds the view(), render(), assets() and s() helpers globally.

🚀 Usage

🧱 Rendering views

Use the view() helper to render a template and return the result as a string:

$content = view('hello', ['name' => 'World']);

This is useful if you want to process or wrap the HTML manually.

Use the render() helper to return a response object instead (e.g. in your controller):

return render('hello', ['name' => 'World']);

This renders the view and wraps it in a proper response, ready to be returned from any route handler.

To load a template file in another folder, you can use the dot notation:

return render('pages.hello', ['name' => 'World']);

Or even multiple levels:

return render('pages.elements.hello', ['name' => 'World']);

This works for both view() and render().

🧩 Layouts & Blocks

Use setLayout() to define a parent layout, and block()/endblock() to inject content:

`views/page.phtml`

<?php $this->setLayout('layout') ?>

<?php $this->block('content') ?>
    <h1>Hello <?= s($name) ?>!</h1>
<?php $this->endblock('content') ?>

`views/layout.phtml`

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My App</title>
</head>
<body>
    <?= $this->renderBlock('content') ?>
</body>
</html>

🛡️ Escape output

Use the s() helper to sanitize output (HTML-escaped):

<p><?= s($userInput) ?></p>

🎨 Asset Management (CSS & JS)

The plugin includes a small, flexible asset collector used inside layouts to include CSS and JavaScript files.

Assets are added inside views or controllers using the assets() helper:

assets()->add('/assets/style.css');            // CSS
assets()->add('/assets/app.js');               // JavaScript (classic)
assets()->add('/assets/main.js', 'module');    // JavaScript ES module

Output in layout files

Use assets()->render('css') or assets()->render('js') inside your layout:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
    <?= assets()->render('css') ?>
</head>
<body>
    <?= $this->renderBlock('content') ?>
    <?= assets()->render('js') ?>
</body>
</html>

What gets generated?

CSS:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/style.css">

Classic JS:

<script src="/assets/app.js"></script>

Module JS:

<script type="module" src="/assets/main.js"></script>

Internals

All paths are automatically HTML-escaped via s().

🔁 Helper Comparison

Helper	Returns	Use case
`render()`	`ResponseInterface`	Ideal for controller return values
`view()`	`string`	For manual output or further processing
`assets()`	`string`	Include CSS & JS files in layouts
`s()`	`string`	Escape output

🔍 Internals

view() resolves and loads .phtml templates from the directories listed in view:paths (defaults to views/ first with app/views/ as a fallback) before checking any registered plugin or framework views.
setLayout() nests the rendered content into a wrapper view.
Blocks are buffered and stored internally until rendered.

⚙️ Configurable view locations

Set the view:paths configuration to control where templates are resolved inside your application. This plugin ships with src/config.php, which defaults to:

return [
    'view' => [
        'paths' => [
            'views',
            'app/views',
        ],
    ],
];

The entries are resolved relative to BASE_PATH when they are not absolute paths, so you can place templates anywhere and order them however you need. The plugin checks each directory in order before falling back to registered plugin or framework view paths.

✅ Requirements

nixphp/framework >= 1.0

📄 License

MIT License.

nixphp / view

Maintainers

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