Displaying part of a controller in a layout/view

Question

I'm using CakePHP and I have a component I wrote that uses a component called "Users" to handle users login, logout, registration, etc. I would like to render that on the default.ctp layout in a sidebar. How can I do this?

I tried:

    <div id="leftNav">
        <div id="login-block" class="block">
            <?php echo $this->element('loginblock', array('component' => 'user')); ?>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="/users/login">Login</a></li>
                <li><a href="/users/register">Register</a></li>
                <li><a href="/users/logout">Logout</a></li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>

but that was unsuccessful.

Answer 1

You cannot, by definition, render a component. Only the V part of the MVC architecture can be rendered (or at least should be), and components belong in the C part.

The best way to pass information from a component to a view is by setting it via the controller like this:

class MyComponent extends Object {

    function initialize(&$controller) {
        $this->controller =& $controller;
    }

    function someMethod() {
        $this->controller->set('user', $someInformation);
    }

}

And in the view you can output the $user variable as usual.