What are the best practices for adding icons to Zend Framework applications?

Question

I want to add icons to my application. I've put the icons in public_html/images/icons/ and I want a DRY way to put them in my view-scripts. So I'd preferably not repeat..

<img src="<?php echo $this->baseUrl();?>/images/icons/plus-circle.png"</a>

..for every icon. I'd prefer a simple object+function call. What is a best practice for this?

I suspect I should use a view helper, but I don't understand those fully yet.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I would use an View Helper for this.

class My_View_Helper_Icon extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract
{

    public function icon($icon)
    {
        // not sure if you can use $this->baseUrl(); inside view helper
        $baseUrl = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->getBaseUrl();
        $xhtml = sprintf('<img src="%s/images/icons/%s"', $baseUrl, $icon);

        return $xhtml;
    }

}

Inside your view

echo $this->icon('plus-circle.png');

Answer 2

I have a view helper which has the method $this->app()->getFileUrl('favicon.ico'). Which will search the theme's location first then the public location. I assign this to a variable at the top of my view script and all done.

The source for the view helper and front controller plugin can be found here: http://github.com/balupton/balphp/tree/master/trunk/lib/Bal/

Or rather the code directly: http://github.com/balupton/balphp/blob/master/trunk/lib/Bal/Controller/Plugin/App/Abstract.php#L721

Answer 3

Using @ArneRie's answer:

In views/helpers/Icon.php I've written the following class:

class Zend_View_Helper_Icon extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract
{
    //$icon is the name of an icon without the ".png" at the end because all icons
    //are .png
    public function icon($icon)
    {
        $baseUrl = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->getBaseUrl();
        return sprintf('<img src="%s/images/icons/%s.png">', $baseUrl, $icon);
    }
}

In my view file in views/scripts/index/index.phtml I then call the method of the Icon object like so:

<?php echo $this->icon('plus-circle');?>

Answer 4

Here is my version:

class My_View_Helper_Icon extends Zend_View_Helper_HtmlElement
{
    /**
     *
     * @param string $src Icon source
     * @param array $attribs HTML Atrtibutes and values
     * @param string $tag HTML tag name
     * @return string HTML
     */
    public function icon($src, $attribs = array(), $tag = 'img')
    {
        $attribs['src'] = $this->view->baseUrl($src);    
        $html = '<' . $tag . $this->_htmlAttribs($attribs) . $this->getClosingBracket();

        return $html;
    }
}