HMVC and dynamic widgets

Question

Background

I use the word widget as a partial view that have its own controller (so its own actions) and it is placed in almost all pages. I implement the rendering of this via HMVC, that is just great.

Problem

Now, the problem is that the widget itself execute actions. Think about a shopping cart widget. That widget is placed in all pages so the user can see his/her stuff all along. And the widget have actions that are related to it, for instance: RemoveItem, RefreshCart, ApplyDiscountCoupon, etc. Such actions should trigger by a button or link and the link should be something like (in HMVC):

<a href='<?site_url()?>/cart/cart/removeitem/the_item_id'>Remove this item</a>

Ok. Now the user clicks that link, the cart module and cart controller are loaded and the action is executed, the action should look something like:

function removeitem($itemid)
{
     // remove the item from db
     ...

     // "load the view"  ???
}

As you can see, my question is how to load the view in a HMVC module. The thing is that if I only load the cart view, it will only show my cart, and I can’t just redirect or load the main page because it can be any main page, that is: the cart could be in any main page (select product, keep buying, see product details, billing info, checkout, etc). :/

Another thing: a requirement is that I can’t use AJAX in this project.

Do you know how HMVC handle this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Ok. No luck with the community. Nevertheless I found a workaround. Hope would be helpful to someone.

HMVC doesn't have a natural solution to this. So I decided to use this workaround:

1. Into each main controller (that is, no widget, no partial view) I grab the current url in session this way *(/controllers/keep_buying.php)*:

   class Keep_buying extends Controller
   {
       function Keep_buying()
       {
           parent::Controller();
           $this->session->set_userdata('main_uri', uri_string()); 
       }
       ...
   }
   

2. Then in my partial view widget (HMVC module view) I have a normal link to my widget controller *(/modules/cart/views/cart_show.php)*:

   <a class="button" href="cart/cart/additem">Add Item</a>
   

3. At the controller action (HMVC module controller action) I retrieve the current main page, do stuff and then redirect to that page, that implicitly will get into my widget flow (due to HMVC).

   class Cart extends Controller
   {
       ...
       function additem()
       {
           $to_redirect = $this->session->userdata('main_uri');
           // add-item work stuff...
           redirect($to_redirect);
       }
   }
   

That is. Is not the ideal approach IMHO, but works.