The Main Template View

The main template view is the index.phtml file that is located in the root of the template folder.  phtml is an extension that Zend uses to designate php generated html files.  It is the default extension for all Zend Views.

Here is the standard template's code:

 You will see that this looks much like any php / html page.  You can put what ever html or php that you want in this page.  The only difference you will notice are the page tags (bold) and the fact that this page is only displaying the data...there is no application logic mixed up with the views.

Tags used in this view

• $this->pageObj->getTitle() - returns the current pages title
• $this->RenderMenu(0, 1 , 0, null, $id = 'mainNav') - renders the selected menu
  
  • the first parameter is the parent id.  in this case this is the site root, so 0
  • the second parameter is the number of levels deep to render (this will be done with nested lists)
  • the third parameter is the current level (0 for the root)
  • the fourth parameter is the base path that will be added to the link
  • the final parameter is the id of the <ul />
• $this->RenderBreadcrumbs() - a view helper that renders the site breadcrumbs
• $this->pageBody - this is loaded by the application.  it is the page content rendered in the proper layout script.

About the pageObj (page object)

The pageObj is the page data object that the application passes to the front end views. This object has many common methods for fetching and traversing the site content.

Note: a lot of times it is difficult to remember just what is being passed to your view data wise. On your testing server only! you can use the Zend dump command to inspect your pageObj.  <?php Zend_Debug::dump($this->pageObj);?>