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Views

NixPHP comes with a lightweight native view system.
It provides simple template inheritance, layout usage, and reusable content blocks — without needing a heavy engine like Blade or Twig.

Rendering a View

You can render a view file using the render() helper function:

use function NixPHP\render;

return render('hello', ['name' => 'World']);
  • The first argument is the view name (relative to the app/views/ folder, using dot notation).
  • The second argument is an optional array of variables to pass into the view.
  • render() automatically wraps the view in a proper Response object.

This will load app/views/hello.phtml.

View Files

View files are simple PHP templates with .phtml extension.

Example: app/views/hello.phtml

<?php use function NixPHP\s; ?>

<h1>Hello, <?= s($name) ?>!</h1>
  • Use the s() helper to safely escape variables for HTML output.

Layouts

You can create a layout and attach it to your view using setLayout().

Example: app/views/layouts/main.phtml

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title><?= $this->renderBlock('title', 'NixPHP App') ?></title>
</head>
<body>
    <?= $this->renderBlock('content') ?>
</body>
</html>

In your view:

<?php use function NixPHP\s; ?>

<?php $this->setLayout('layouts.main') ?>

<?php $this->block('title') ?>
Hello Page
<?php $this->endblock('title') ?>

<?php $this->block('content') ?>
<h1>Hello, <?= s($name) ?>!</h1>
<?php $this->endblock('content') ?>
  • setLayout('layouts.main') specifies the layout file (dot notation).
  • block('name') and endblock('name') define a section.
  • renderBlock('name') renders the defined blocks into the layout.

Variables in Views

All variables passed to render() are automatically extracted into the view.

Example:

return render('profile', ['user' => $user]);

In app/views/profile.phtml:

<?php use function NixPHP\s; ?>

<h2>Welcome, <?= s($user['name']) ?>!</h2>

Rendering Views without a Response

Sometimes you only need the raw HTML output of a view without wrapping it in a full Response object.
For this, you can use the view() helper:

use function NixPHP\view;

$html = view('hello', ['name' => 'World']);
  • view() returns the rendered HTML as a plain string.
  • It does not create a Response object.
  • Useful for building custom responses or templates manually.

Summary

  • Views are located in app/views/.
  • Use dot notation when referencing views (e.g., layouts.main).
  • Use setLayout() to attach layouts inside views.
  • Use s() to escape variables.
  • Use render() for full responses and view() for raw HTML output.