Views are written in PHP and HTML and have a .php file extension. View scripts are placed in /com_{component name}/{client}/views/, where they are further categorized by the /{viewname}/tmpl. Within these subdirectories, you will then find and create view scripts that correspond to each controller action exposed; in the default case, we have the view script display.php.

/app
  /components
    /com_{componentname}
      /{client [site, admin]}
        /views
          /{viewname}
            /tmpl
              default.php

Overriding module and component presentation in templates is further explained in the Templates: Overrides section.

The task of the view is very simple: It retrieves the data to be displayed and pushes it into the template.

// Instantiate a new view
$view = new \Hubzero\Component\View(array(
    'name' => $this->_controller,
    'layout' => 'foo'
));

// Assign data to the view
$view->greetings = 'Hello';

// Echo out the results
$view->display();

In the above example, the view constructor is passed an array of options. The two most important options are listed: name, which is the folder to look for the view file in and will typically correspond to the current controller's name, and layout, which is the specific view file to load. If no layout is specified, the layout is typically auto-assigned to the current task name. So, if the controller in the example code is one, the directory structure would look as follow:

/com_example
    /views
        /one
            /tmpl
                /foo.php

Method Chaining

All Hubzero view objects support method chaining for brevity and ease of use.

// Instantiate a new view
$view = new \Hubzero\Component\View(array(
    'name' => $this->_controller,
    'layout' => 'foo'
));

$view->set('greetings', 'Hello')
      ->setLayout('bar')
      ->display();