Views

Basic Usage

Views contain the HTML served by your application and separate your controller / application logic from your presentation logic. Views are stored in the resources/views directory.

A simple view might look something like this:

<!-- View stored in resources/views/greeting.php -->

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello, <?php echo $name; ?></h1>
    </body>
</html>

Since this view is stored at resources/views/greeting.php, we may return it using the global view helper function like so:

$app->get('/', function ()  {
    return view('greeting', ['name' => 'James']);
});

As you can see, the first argument passed to the view helper corresponds to the name of the view file in the resources/views directory. The second argument passed to helper is an array of data that should be made available to the view. In this case, we are passing the name variable, which is displayed in the view by simply executing echo on the variable.

Of course, views may also be nested within sub-directories of the resources/views directory. "Dot" notation may be used to reference nested views. For example, if your view is stored at resources/views/admin/profile.php, you may reference it like so:

return view('admin.profile', $data);

Determining If A View Exists

If you need to determine if a view exists, you may use the exists method after calling the view helper with no arguments. This method will return true if the view exists on disk:

if (view()->exists('emails.customer')) {
    //
}

When the view helper is called without arguments, an instance of Illuminate\Contracts\View\Factory is returned, giving you access to any of the factory's methods.

View Data

Passing Data To Views

As you saw in the previous examples, you may easily pass an array of data to views:

return view('greetings', ['name' => 'Victoria']);

When passing information in this manner, $data should be an array with key/value pairs. Inside your view, you can then access each value using it's corresponding key, such as <?php echo $key; ?>. As an alternative to passing a complete array of data to the view helper function, you may use the with method to add individual pieces of data to the view:

$view = view('greeting')->with('name', 'Victoria');

Sharing Data With All Views

Occasionally, you may need to share a piece of data with all views that are rendered by your application. You may do so using the view factory's share method. Typically, you would place calls to share within a service provider's boot method. You are free to add them to the AppServiceProvider or generate a separate service provider to house them:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Bootstrap any application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
        view()->share('key', 'value');
    }

    /**
     * Register the service provider.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        //
    }
}