CakePHP - Extending Views

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Many times, while making web pages, we want to repeat certain part of pages in other pages. CakePHP has such facility by which one can extend view in another view and for this, we need not repeat the code again.

The extend() method is used to extend views in View file. This method takes one argument, i.e., the name of the view file with path. Don’t use extension .ctp while providing the name of the View file.

Example

Make changes in the config/routes.php file as shown in the following program.

config/routes.php

<?php
use Cake\Http\Middleware\CsrfProtectionMiddleware;
use Cake\Routing\Route\DashedRoute;
use Cake\Routing\RouteBuilder;
$routes->setRouteClass(DashedRoute::class);
$routes->scope('/', function (RouteBuilder $builder) {
   $builder->registerMiddleware('csrf', new CsrfProtectionMiddleware([
      'httpOnly' => true,
   ]));
   $builder->applyMiddleware('csrf');
   $builder->connect('extend',['controller'=>'Extends','action'=>'index']);
   $builder->fallbacks();
});

Create an ExtendsController.php file at src/Controller/ExtendsController.php. Copy the following code in the controller file.

src/Controller/ExtendsController.php

<?php
   namespace App\Controller;
   use App\Controller\AppController;
   class ExtendsController extends AppController{
      public function index(){
      }
   }
?>

Create a directory Extends at src/Template and under that folder create a View file called header.php. Copy the following code in that file.

src/Template/Extends/header.php

<div align="center">
   <h1>Common Header</h1>
</div>
<?= $this->fetch('content') ?>

Create another View under Extends directory called index.php. Copy the following code in that file. Here, we are extending the above view header.php.

src/Template/Extends/index.php

<?php $this->extend('header'); ?>
This is an example of extending view.

Execute the above example by visiting the following URL http://localhost/cakephp4/extend

Output

Upon execution, you will receive the following output.