Binding View::composer to match all views using wildcards?

Question

I have a navigation bar like this.

<li>Account</li>
   <ul>
      <li>Register</li>
      <li>Login/li>
      ...

I want to update this dynamically depending on Auth::check(). For example, if the user is logged in, "Account" will be changed with "My Profile Page" and child siblings will be replaced with an appropriate array.

I need to do this without editing View::make calls in my controllers. It looks pretty bad.

A solution like this is what I'm looking for;

View::composer('home.*', function($view) {
    if(Auth::check())
       return $view->nest('accountArea', 'home.navigation-loggedIn', null);
    else
       return $view->nest('accountArea', 'home.navigation-visitor', null);
});

If there are better alternatives, I would like to hear them too!

Allo

What about binding the view composer to your layout instead? – Software

Can you elaborate this a bit? – Allo

Well, I'm assuming that you're using layouts, and that you want to nest onto the layout (not your actual content's view). So you'd do something like View::composer('layouts.default', ...). – Software

@PhillSparks Yes. I have a layout.blade.php which contains the general markup plus @yield('content'). So, doing View::composer('home.layout', ...) does automatically bind all the content files yielding on defined layout? Also I want to ask one more thing. (similar question) How do the people using Laravel handle 'always has to be binded' things like '<title>{{ $title }}</title>'. Is there any good-practice uses I can have a look at? – Allo

@Imaqtpie, this may help you. – Owings

Answer 1

Seems like the wildcards in Laravel works. They're just undocumented as of now.

View::composer('admin.layouts.*', function($view)
{
     if (Sentry::check()) $view->with('navigation', View::make('admin._partials.navigation'));
     else                 $view->with('navigation', null);
});

That's what I was looking for.

Update: Here is an alternative solution

You can also bind it to the layout, so all the subviews that extend that layout will benefit from composer.

View::composer('admin.layouts.main_layout', function($view)
{
     if (Sentry::check()) $view->with('navigation', View::make('admin._partials.navigation'));
     else                 $view->with('navigation', null);
});

It will bind composers to every view that does @extend('admin.layouts.main_layout').

Allo

The view composer thing didn't work in my case. I sent a variable to a layout. but it was only available in the layout and not in views that extended it. I userd View::share(key, value) – Party

Is it possible to have it not apply to some views? So reverse the wildcard? – Gasworks

Answer 2

You can use View::share('variable', 'value') to share a variable across all views.

Mud

Goes into routes.php I believe? – Allo

Depends, I like to create a composers.php file to put my View composers so I usually put them there. – Mud

Answer 3

Like Aristona says (thanks for de advice!): wildcards are allowed. Glancing at the code, we can see how Composers are Event Listeners, and in that section of the documentation is pointed out: Wildcard event listeners.

Adding a little bit more, ultimately, Str::is() is used by Events\Dispatcher to detect wildcar listeners. For example, something like this:

str_is('namespace::*.view', 'namespace::folder.view')

In short, I agree that would not hurt a small informative phrase :)

Jory