PHP-View: A PHP repository from Slim Framework

PHP Renderer

This is a renderer for rendering PHP view scripts into a PSR-7 Response object. It works well with Slim Framework 4.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) risks

Note that PHP-View has no built-in mitigation from XSS attacks. It is the developer's responsibility to use htmlspecialchars() or a component like laminas-escaper. Alternatively, consider Twig-View.

Installation

composer require slim/php-view

Usage with any PSR-7 Project

//Construct the View
$renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates');

$viewData = [
    'key1' => 'value1',
    'key2' => 'value2',
];

// Render a template
$response = $renderer->render(new Response(), 'hello.php', $viewData);

Usage with Slim 4

use Slim\AppFactory;
use Slim\Views\PhpRenderer;

require __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';

$app = AppFactory::create();

$app->get('/hello', function ($request, $response) {
    $renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates');
    
    $viewData = [
        'name' => 'John',
    ];
    
    return $renderer->render($response, 'hello.php', $viewData);
});

$app->run();

DI Container Setup

You can place the PhpRenderer instantiation within your DI Container.

<?php

use Psr\Container\ContainerInterface;
use Slim\Views\PhpRenderer;
// ...

return [
    PhpRenderer::class => function (ContainerInterface $container) {
        $renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates');

        return $renderer;
    },
];

Template Variables

You can now add variables to your renderer that will be available to all templates you render.

// Via the constructor
$globalViewData = [
    'title' => 'Title'
];

$renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates', $globalViewData);

// or setter
$viewData = [
    'key1' => 'value1',
    'key2' => 'value2',
];
$renderer->setAttributes($viewData);

// or individually
$renderer->addAttribute($key, $value);

Data passed in via the render() method takes precedence over attributes.

$viewData = [
    'title' => 'Title'
];
$renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates', $viewData);

//...

$response = $renderer->render($response, $template, [
    'title' => 'My Title'
]);

// In the view above, the $title will be "My Title" and not "Title"

Sub-templates

Inside your templates you may use $this to refer to the PhpRenderer object to render sub-templates. If using a layout the fetch() method can be used instead of render() to avoid applying the layout to the sub-template.

<?=$this->fetch('./path/to/partial.phtml', ['name' => 'John'])?>

Rendering in Layouts

You can now render view in another views called layouts, this allows you to compose modular view templates and help keep your views DRY.

Create your layout path/to/templates/layout.php

<html><head><title><?=$title?></title></head><body><?=$content?></body></html>

Create your view template path/to/templates/hello.php

Hello <?=$name?>!

Rendering in your code.

$renderer = new PhpRenderer('path/to/templates', ['title' => 'My App']);
$renderer->setLayout('layout.php');

$viewData = [
    'title' => 'Hello - My App',
    'name' => 'John',
];

//...

$response = $renderer->render($response, 'hello.php', $viewData);

Response will be

<html><head><title>Hello - My App</title></head><body>Hello John!</body></html>

Please note, the $content is special variable used inside layouts to render the wrapped view and should not be set in your view parameters.

Escaping values

It's essential to ensure that the HTML output is secure to prevent common web vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). This package has no built-in mitigation from XSS attacks.

The following function uses the htmlspecialchars function with specific flags to ensure proper encoding:

function html(?string $text = null): string
{
    return htmlspecialchars($text ?? '', ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE, 'UTF-8');
}

You could consider setting it up as a global function in composer.json.

Usage

Hello <?= html($name) ?>

Exceptions

\Slim\Views\Exception\PhpTemplateNotFoundException - If template layout does not exist
\Slim\Views\Exception\PhpTemplateNotFoundException - If template does not exist
\RuntimeException - If the template output could not be fetched
\InvalidArgumentException - If $data contains 'template'

slimphp/PHP-View