The Zend Framework in Practice

As mentioned previously, the framework normally tries to find and execute a view script after exiting the action method in the controller class; to stop it from doing this, you need to add the following line to the method:

$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);

The basic mechanism for passing data from the controller to the view script is via the Zend_View object. This is referenced by $this->view in the controller class, but simply by $this in the view script, since that is executing within the context of the Zend_View object.

For instance, you might set an error message in you action handler like this:

$this->view->error = "Unable to connect to database.";

Then retrieve and display the error message like this:

echo '<p class="error">' . $this->error . '</p>';

In the next post we shall look at view helpers, then we shall move on to layouts.