Views

Views are plain PHP files in the views/ folder. There is no template syntax to learn.

views/
├── 404.php
├── home.php
└── partials/
    ├── header.php
    └── footer.php

Rendering from a controller

return $this->view('home', [
    'content' => 'home content',
    'title' => 'home page',
]);

The name maps to a file, so 'home' renders views/home.php and 'users/show' renders views/users/show.php. A missing file is a server error, so check the name when one appears.

Layouts with partials

Build pages by injecting shared header and footer partials.

<?php $this->inject('partials/header') ?>

<p><?= $this->escape('content') ?></p>

<?php $this->inject('partials/footer') ?>

Give a partial its own data with a second argument. That data stays scoped to the partial and does not leak into the rest of the page.

<?php $this->inject('partials/header', ['title' => 'home page']) ?>

Escaping output

Escape every untrusted value at render time. $this->escape() takes the variable name; the global escape() takes the value itself.

<title><?= $this->escape('title') ?></title>
<h1><?= escape($user->name) ?></h1>

Links and assets

Link to named routes with route() and to files with url(). For CSS and JS built by Vite, use viteCss() and viteJs() so development uses hot reload and production uses hashed files (see Frontend Workflow).

<a href="<?= route('welcome.form') ?>">Form</a>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?= $this->url('assets/app.css') ?>">
<?= viteCss('source/scss/app.scss', 'assets/build/css/app.css') ?>
<?= viteJs('source/js/app.js', 'assets/build/js/app.js') ?>

Forms

Protected forms need the hidden CSRF token field (see Middleware).

<form method="POST" action="/form">
    <?= csrf_field() ?>
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>

404 page

When no route matches, the framework renders views/404.php. Edit that file to customize the not-found page.

500 page

Uncaught errors show the Whoops page in development and a generic Internal Server Error (trace: ...) message in production. There is no views/500.php override yet, so production always returns that generic message with the trace id for log correlation.

Editor tip

Templates run with $this set to the view object, which editors flag as invalid in standalone files. Add this as line 1 in templates that use $this for correct autocomplete. It changes nothing at runtime.

<?php /** @var \Roolith\Template\Engine\Interfaces\TemplateContextInterface $this */ ?>