Professional CodeIgniter

Chapter 3: A 10,000 - Foot View of CodeIgniter

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Right before the Template view is loaded, there ’ s a call to $this - > load - > vars() , which makes

the $data array available to not only the final view, but all the subviews as well. Running this

command precludes the need to pass $data in as a second argument to

$this - > load - > view().

Since this is extremely basic, before you progress, it ’ s time to create the views needed.

Views

At this point, you ’ re only ready to start tackling views in a very limited way — specifically, creating

reusable components for the project. Have a quick look at your mockup of the home page to plan out

which components you ’ ll need for the project (see Figure 3 - 4 ). As you work, you ’ ll place these

components into the /system/application/views/ folder.

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Figure 3-4

Any experienced web developer will tell you that a template of this nature has at least three reusable

components:

A wide horizontal header bar, containing the logo, global navigation, and search widget

A wide horizontal footer bar, containing the copyright notice and a link to the privacy statement

A narrow vertical navigation component that provides links to categories

The rest of the page real estate consists of content that changes from page to page. The home page may

use this real estate to show a featured item, whereas the search() function might use that same real

estate to display appropriate search results.

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