# Views

Views are a low-cost component of Pinatra with almost no performance penalty, using PHP itself as a template engine.

# Preparation

Before using the view component, we need to create a new folder as the root of the view files and define a constant to pass this information.

# New folder

Create a new folder views as the same level as public.

# Tell Pinatra

Add the following line of code to public/index.php:

Define('VIEW_BASE_PATH', dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/views/');

# Creating a view file

Create a views/home.php file with the following code:

<?php
echo $title.'<br>';
echo $home_page;

# Calling a view and passing in parameters

Whether in a closure or in a controller method, you can simply call the view with the following statement:

get('/', function() {
  return view('home')->withTitle('Pinatra')
                     ->withHomePage('HomePage!');
});

class HomeController
{
  public function home()
  {
    return view('home')->withTitle('Pinatra')
                       ->withHomePage('HomePage!');
  }
}

Visit the right URL and you will get the following page:

# Way of passing parameters

# with()

view('home')->with('title', 'Piantra'); // $title == 'Pinatra'

# All functions starting with with

view('home')->withTitle('Piantra'); // $title == 'Pinatra'
view('home')->withtitle('Piantra'); // $title == 'Pinatra'
view('home')->withHomePage('Piantra'); // $home_page == 'Pinatra'

withSomeThing() will be translated from camelCase to snake_case when injected into a view.

# Return

The call to the view must use the return view() statement.