Laravel Viewables

Like Laravel's Mailables, Viewables allow you to take a class based approach to working with and handling your views in Laravel.

Install via Composer

composer require "haganjones/laravel-viewables"

Include Service Provider

In config/app.php add the below to your service providers array:

HaganJones\LaravelViewables\Providers\ServiceProvider::class,

Writing Viewables

All of a viewable class' configuration is done in the build method. Within this method, you may call various methods such as view and with to render and pass data to the view.

Configuring The View

Within a viewable class' build method, you may use the view method to specify which template should be used when rendering the view:

/**
 * Build the message.
 *
 * @return $this
 */
public function build()
{
    return $this->view('dashboard');
}

View Data

Via Public Properties

Typically, you will want to pass some data to your view that you can utilize when rendering the view's HTML. There are two ways you may make data available to your view. First, any public property defined on your viewable class will automatically be made available to the view. So, for example, you may pass data into your viewable class' constructor and set that data to public properties defined on the class:

<?php
namespace App\View;
 
use App\User;
use HaganJones/LaravelViewables/View/Viewable;
 
class DashboardView extends Viewable
{
    /**
     * The user instance.
     *
     * @var User
     */
    public $user;
 
    /**
     * Create a new viewable instance.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct(User $user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
    }
 
    /**
     * Build the view.
     *
     * @return $this
     */
    public function build()
    {
        return $this->view('dashboard');
    }
}

Once the data has been set to a public property, it will automatically be available in your view, so you may access it like you would access any other data in your Blade templates:

<div>
    Logged in as: {{ $user->name }}
</div>

Via The with Method:

If you would like to customize the format of your view's data before it is sent to the template, you may manually pass your data to the view via the with method. Typically, you will still pass data via the viewable class' constructor; however, you should set this data to protected or private properties so the data is not automatically made available to the template. Then, when calling the with method, pass an array of data that you wish to make available to the template:

<?php
namespace App\View;
 
use App\User;
use HaganJones/LaravelViewables/View/Viewable;
 
class DashboardView extends Viewable
{
    /**
     * The user instance.
     *
     * @var User
     */
    protected $user;
 
    /**
     * Create a new viewable instance.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct(User $user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
    }
 
    /**
     * Build the message.
     *
     * @return $this
     */
    public function build()
    {
        return $this->view('dashboard')
            ->with([
                'userName' => $this->user->name,
                'userEmail' => $this->user->email,
            ]);
    }
}

Once the data has been passed to the with method, it will automatically be available in your view, so you may access it like you would access any other data in your Blade templates:

<div>
    Logged in as: {{ $userName }}
</div>

Rendering The View

~~To serve a view, use the helper function viewable(). You may pass an instance of your viewable class to this helper function:~~

As of release 0.2 Viewables implement Laravel's Responsable Interface which now allows you to return a new instance of a Viewable Class straight from the controller. The viewable() function is still available but will be removed in a future release.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
 
use App\User;
use App\View\DashboardView;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
 
class DashboardController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Show the dashboard page
     *
     * @return Response
     */
    public function get()
    {
        //return viewable(
        //    new DashboardView(Auth::user())
        //);
        
        return new DashboardView(Auth::user());
    }
}