3.8 Application Views - mmig/mmir GitHub Wiki

This folder contains the views of MMIR applications. Each controller can have a set of views which will be rendered by the PresentationManager. The view definitions will be loaded automatically when the application is started.

Additionally to the specific views, there is a folder containing the layout definitions: each controller may have one layout definition of its own, which will be used for rendering its views. The layout definition for a controller is placed in a file that has the same name as the controller's file, for example the controller Calendar is implemented in the file controllers/calendar.js, and its layout file would be views/layouts/calendar.ehtml.

If a controller does not have a specific layout definition, then the default layout default.ehtml is used for rendering the controller's views.

The file for the default layout default.ehtml must be present:

there must always be a valid layout definition at views/layouts/default.ehtml!

 

As an example, see the StarterKit which has only the default layout defaul.ehtml that is used for all views of the Application as well as the Calendar controller.

Example: A layout and view are combined for rendering the resulting HTML page.

In MVC based architecture, the view component is responsible for presenting the data to the user in a way that is "palatable" to the user, abstracting from the unnecessary details. In other words, any framework implementing and supporting the MVC pattern should provide means for to ease abstraction and presentation of the required data. This is also true for the MMIR framework, which follows the MVC pattern. The view definition should provide all necessary services for building a dynamic View component. The following are the main services provided by the views:

• Layout (will be described below)
• Templates (the views and partial views; will be described below)
• View Helpers (see section Application Helpers)

Layout vs. View vs. Partial

The main concept for displaying content to the user (i.e. the GUI) is the view. Layouts and partials can be considered "helper constructs" that assist in rendering the view for display to the user.|

The main differences between layouts, views, and partials are notably:

Layouts: are used to specify the "skeleton" for all views of a controller. The layout contains the static, non-changing content that stays the same for all views, and the layout contains the @yield declarations, which are named section-declaration that will be "filled in" by the specific view's @contentFor definitions.

Located at: /views/layouts/[controller-name].ehtml

 

Views: specify the content that should be filled into the layout's @yield-sections; i.e. the content that is specified with the @contentFor expressions is rendered into the corresponding @yield sections of the view's layout. In difference to layouts, views can contain various template expressions for dynamically creating content, e.g. @for, @if, @{code}@, ...

NOTE: content in a view that is not specified within a @contentFor expression will be ignored when rendering the view into its layout.

Located at: /views/[controller-name]/[view-name].ehtml

 

Partials: are usually small "partial content" definitions (e.g. for re-usable content definitions) that are rendered "as-is", i.e. partial templates do not use @contentFor section definitions (as views do), but instead all the partial's content is rendered into the referring view. A partial can be included into a view by using the @render expression.

NOTE: the file-names of partials are prefixed with ~ (tilde). However, when referring to partials (e.g. using the @render expression) this character is omitted.

Located at: /views/[controller-name]/~[partial-name].ehtml

When MMIR renders a view, it does so by combining the view with the controller's layout. If the controller has no specific layout defined, the Application layout will be used instead. For defining layouts, you have access to 2 template expressions:

• Asset tags (i.e. template expressions @script and @link)
• Yield tags (i.e. template expression @yield) Note that in views (and partials) additional template expression can be used, see section View Template Expressions.

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