Codeigniter - how to reuse code to generate a block of HTML

Question

I think I might be approaching this in the wrong way, so I would appreciate any comments/guidance. Hopefully I can explain coherently enough what I am trying to achieve:

• I want to create a block of HTML (e.g. a box containing a user's profile), which I will load as part of my layout on most pages that I generate.

• I would also like to be able to re-generate the content within this box on its own from a separate URL. This is so I can update the box with an AJAX call.

• I don't want to duplicate the code that creates this HTML.

I appreciate that I could initally load this box using an AJAX call, but that would seem to me to add an unnecessary call to the server?

The way I thought I could do it is by having a method in my controller that just renders this block of HTML, but how would I then request the output from this method within another controller / view?

How would you approach this?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Create a view to generate the block of HTML for the user's profile and call it from your controller using:

$user_html = $this->load->view('user_view', $user_data, true);

The third parameter returns the view as a string instead of displaying it. This can then be passed into another view in the usual way.

$data['user_block'] = $user_html;
$this->load->view('page_view', $data);

Answer 2

As far as data is concerned, you dont 'need' to generate the HTML with PHP. You can use jQuery to generate the necessary elements from a JSON object output in the page source. You can then show a nice little 'loading' animation on the element whilst it gets around to hitting a state of 'domready'.

As far as repopulating a div is concerned, do the following:

Make a div for your profile and give it an id. Put each 'element' of data into it's own p element and wrap the actual data in a span element. e.g <p>Name: <span>Joe Bloggs</span></p> Then simply use jQuery to traverse the dom and repopulate the spans with data. Just make sure you output your data in the correct 'order'.

Any questions, feel free to feedback.