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:

`app/views/page.phtml`

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

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

`app/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 /app/views/ or any registered view path.
setLayout() nests the rendered content into a wrapper view.
Blocks are buffered and stored internally until rendered.

✅ Requirements

nixphp/framework >= 1.0

📄 License

MIT License.

nixphp / view

Maintainers

Details