mouf/html.renderer (2.0.0.0)
For template developers

Mouf renderer: Advanced topics

I have several ways to render an object. How can I pass this to the renderer?

The default toHtml() will always call the same renderer for your object. However, you might want to use different renderers for the same object.

To do this, you have to stop using the toHtml() utility method, and directly call the renderer. The renderer supports the notion of "context".

$myObject = new MyObject();

// Let's get the default renderer
$defaultRenderer = Mouf::getDefaultRenderer();

// Let's render your object with a special context
$defaultRenderer->render($myObject, "mycontext");

As you can see, the second argument is the context. It has to be a string, that can be used by the renderers to pick another renderer.

In this exemple, the rendering engine will try to search for these files:

  • MyObject__mycontext.twig (notice the double underscore)
  • MyObject__mycontext.php (notice the double underscore)
  • MyObject.twig
  • MyObject.php

As you can see, the renderer will append the context to the name of the class and see if a template with this name exists.

Will a template be used for children class?

Yes. If your class does not have a renderer, the rendering engine will try to find a renderer in your parent class.

Can a template be applied to an interface?

Yes. If your class does not have a renderer, and none of its parent class has a renderer, the rendering engine will try to find a renderer in the interfaces. This means you can have renderers based on interfaces. If you have a menu item representes by the MenuInterface interface, you can have a MenuInterface.twig template file.

I don't want to use neither PHP nor Twig, I want my own rendering engine!

You can implement your own rendering engine.

The html.renderer package comes with 2 packages:

  • FileBasedRenderer: the class in charge of rendering the PHP and Twig templates
  • AutoChainRenderer: the class used by the default renderer. Its sole purpose is to detect other renderers and call them sequentially.

The AutoChainRenderer will automatically detect any instance whose implemnts the ChainableRendererInterface interface. If you want to provide your own renderer (Smarty for instance), you just have to create a class implementing the ChainableRendererInterface and create an instance of it. Do not forget to purge your cache if you want your renderer to be detected by the "default renderer"!

For template developers

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