Presenter

Simple presenter to wrap and render objects. Designed to work with Laravel, but will also work as a stand-alone solution.

Installation

Add the following to the "require" section of your composer.json file:

	"bigelephant/presenter": "dev-master"

Basic Usage

The core idea is the relationship between two classes: your model full of data and a presenter which works as a sort of wrapper to help with your views. For instance, if you have a User object you might have a UserPresenter presenter to go with it. To use it all you do is $userObject = new UserPresenter($userObject);. The $userObject will function the same unless a method is called that is a member of the UserPresenter. Another way to think of it is that any call that doesn't exist in the UserPresenter falls through to the original object. There are some full examples below.

Usage Within Laravel

Laravel has several shortcuts that you can use, but first you must add the Service Provider. Add the following to your app/config/app.php, providers array (has to be after the ViewServiceProvider):

	'BigElephant\Presenter\PresenterServiceProvider',

Now you can implement the interface BigElephant\Presenter\PresentableInterface on your models and when you do, the View will automatically turn your model into the defined presenter. So you will just pass your normal object to View::make(...) and it will handle the rest for use within your views. Also examples below.

You might also like to alias the classes so you don't have to write out the namespaces over and over. To do this add the following to your app/config/app.php, aliases array:

	'Presenter' 	=> 'BigElephant\Presenter\Presenter',
	'Presentable'	=> 'BigElephant\Presenter\PresentableInterface',

Examples

Note: these examples use a made up slugify method

Example Model

// Assume this data is loaded into the model
class User {

	public $uniqueId = 1;

	public $firstName = 'Bazza';

	public $lastName = 'Pitt';

	public $email = 'email@bourbon.com';
}

Example Presenter

class UserPresenter extends BigElephant\Presenter\Presenter {
	
	public function getUrl()
	{
		return 'members/'.slugify($this->firstName);
	}
}

Example Controller

class UserController {

	public function index()
	{
		$user = new User;

		return $this->someViewMethod('view_name', ['user' => new UserPresenter($user)]);
	}
}

Example View

<h2><? echo $user->firstName; ?></h2>

<a href="<? echo $user->getUrl(); ?>">Link To This User</a>

Advanced Example

Another Example Presenter

class AdminUserPresenter extends BigElephant\Presenter\Presenter {

	public function getEditUrl()
	{
		return 'members/'.$this->uniqueId.'/edit';
	}
}

Example Controller Modified

class UserController {

	public function index()
	{
		$user = new User;

		$user = new UserPresenter($user);
		$user = new AdminUserPresenter($user);

		// $user will now contain all new methods/variables from both presenters

		return $this->someViewMethod('view_name', ['user' => $user]);
	}
}

Laravel Example

Example Model

use BigElephant\Presenter\PresentableInterface;

class Topic extends Eloquent implements PresentableInterface
{
	public static function recent($count = 5)
	{
		return static::with('author')->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->take($count)->get();
	}

	public function author()
	{
		return $this->belongsTo('User', 'user_id');
	}

	public function tags()
	{
		return $this->hasMany('Tag');
	}

	public function getPresenter()
	{
		return new TopicPresenter($this);
	}
}

Example Presenter

use BigElephant\Presenter\Presenter;

class TopicPresenter extends Presenter
{
	public function url()
	{
		return URL::action('TopicController@show', [slugify($this->title).'.'.$this->id]);
	}

	public function publishedDate()
	{
		return date('d-m-y', strtotime($this->created_at));
	}
}

Example Controller

class TopicController extends Controller {
	public function getIndex()
	{
		$recentTopics = Topic::recent(100);

		return View::make('topics/index', ['recentTopics' => $recentTopics]);
	}
}

Note: between the above controller and getting the the view the Topic objects in the $recentTopics collection will be turned into the presenter by calling ->getPresenter() from the model.

Example View

<ul>
@foreach ($recentTopics AS $topic)
	<li><a href="{{ $topic->url() }}">{{ $topic->title }}</a></li>
@endforeach
</ul>