Well said. When I started out with ZF I encountered the Actionstack, and a whole load of problems – many of which you touch on.

I couldn’t agree more. I got a boatload of probs when I first started using Zend and the Actionstack. You touched on many of those issues. Just clarifies my thoughts on things…..

Actionstack is not evil :
Hello,
Actively developing with zf you can’t avoid hearing this over and over again, people compalining about the actionstack. I understand that you CAN make partials and views that render and fetch different stuff from the models. However, to create trully modular components, actionstack is a logical way to go (if actionstack really is such a bottleneck for performance maybe it should be made lighter).
I have created an architecture which has dynamic modules that belong to some zone in a layout. The actionstack is used to make all the modules render themselves with their indexaction. For this reason I could just take that module and only use it solo because in indexaction it only echoes it’s own content. If you are using view scripts to also display actions of several modules in your page it is not really modular. I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying and I do get that actionstack gives overhead but it is still the thing that makes my modules the most logical I can have them.
One thing though, I have never found the need for the action view helper and can’t really see a real use case for that one
Cheers

Hello My Friend,
Can you tell me how did you do that?
How to echoes layouts->widgetized with the calling name of a nameAction?

With actionstack I can use ONE action dedicated to that block which handles all the code needed to render its view.

Now how would you go about using something else then actionstack to render that block along with the main content without having to write those 15 lines of code (that are only written once! when using actionstack) in EVERY action or controller init where I want to render said block?
Also consider that the block in question is like a switch, in 50% of pages i need viewX for the same block and in the remaining viewY (just to make a point here).

Until recently I used render, renderScript and the partial view helper and from my 16 month experience with zend none are as elegant as actionstack.
Just:
actionstack(nav,nav)
actionstack(filters,filters)
actionstack(cart,cart)
actionstack(search,search)

and all thats left is the main content. Can’t say I’ve noticed any performance changes.

http://framework.zend.com/manual/1.11/en/zend.controller.actionhelpers.html

HTH

What it seems *would* make sense is for there to be some way to know you are in a “sub request” and thus bail out of a lot of the initialization that happens.

~ehtan

Cristian :
I am investigating also some ways to avoid using ActionStack for widgetized content to see what effective options we have. I am trying to put some very simple sample cases.
1. Using view->render
Into action controller prepare data for those areas and set it to view: $this->view->data = LoadDataFromModel.
Then on view we are simply making a $this->render(‘widgetA.phtml’), and widgetA.phtml makes use of data supplied to view;
This is probably the fastest into processing terms, no helper used.
2. Using view->render with layout & response segments
Let’s suppose on Layout we have two zones, zone1, and zone2 with witgetized content (data from some diff sources).
layout()->zone1?>
layout()->content?>
layout()->zone2?>
Into action controller prepare data for those areas and set it to view $this->view->data = $data_from_model.
Then:
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response->insert(‘zone1′, $this->view->render(‘widget1.phtml’));
$response->insert(‘zone2′, $this->view->render(‘widget2.phtml’));
Advantage of this methos would be the fact that is adapted to use of layouts.
3. Using view helpers without layout – fixed widgets
This is similar as 1, just that:
- Instead of $this->render(‘widgetA.phtml’) we are calling helper: $this->widgetA(….)
- Data is loaded by helper, not on action
I said fixed widgets because in such case the widget call is hardcoded into a specific template, so we won’t really have the option to use diff widgets on same position depending on case
3. Using view helpers without layout – dynamic widgets
This is similar with3, just that:
- Instead of calling $this->widgetA(….) we are calling $this->widget(….)
- $this->widget(….) dynamically select the proper widget to call and it returns his return result
5. Using view helpers with layouts
This is similar as 2, just that on action we have something like that
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response->insert(‘zone1′, $this->view->widgetA());
$response->insert(‘zone2′, $this->view->widgetB());
And of course, we can automatically select the widget to be called.
Might be other ways, i just tried to make a list to see choices…