How does the lithium PHP framework generate a $this context in a PHP page?

Question

I've been investigating the Lithium PHP Framework and I don't understand how it sets $this->context; (particularly in this layout.)

Since you cannot simply re-assign $this obviously this layout will get included at some point and what confuses me even more is the fact that they use $this outside a class definition.

I haven't coded PHP in a while so please help me out here.

Touki · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-22T10:12:00.903

4

The first idea that strikes me is that this templating page is called from a method.

class Viewer
{
    public $html;
    private $title;
    private $content;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->html = new \Utilities\HTMLBag();
    }
    public function loadView($template)
    {
        ob_start();
        include 'path/to/views/'.$template.'.php';
        $this->content = ob_get_clean();
    }
    public function title()
    {
        return $this->title;
    }
}

From this point, the included $template can access any method of Viewer's class

edited Nov 22 '12 at 10:12

answered Nov 22 '12 at 10:06

Touki

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2

Yup, this is pretty much how Lithium does it. It's also how pretty much almost all PHP frameworks & template libraries using PHP templates do it. – Nate Abele Nov 23 '12 at 17:23

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 22 '12 at 10:02

Simply: By calling include/require inside of an method in a class.

File A.php:

<?php
class A {
    public $test = 'Hello';

    public function xyz() {
        include 'B.php';
    }
}

File B.php:

<html>
    <body><?php echo $this->test; ?></body>
</html>

How does the lithium PHP framework generate a $this context in a PHP page?

2 Answers2