Adding parameters to templates before render-time

[kynx]

My first run at #142. Only tried it with Plates so far. There's probably a better way to do this with ZendView, but I'm a little hazy on that. Let me know if I'm on the right track and I'll do the tests and docs.

[weierophinney]

This method also needs to be added to the interface; otherwise, an implementation could omit it, leaving developers depending on concretions instead of abstractions.

[weierophinney]

Some general notes:

• Terminology needs to be consistent. You have $templateParams, addParameters(), and mergeParams() — three different ways ways of referencing related things. $name is unclear as an argument; are you indicating a parameter name, or a template name? Additionally, these are default parameters to use, not the only parameters. As such, I'd go with:
  • private $defaultParams = []
  • public function setDefaultParams(array $params, $templateName = null) (more on this method later)
  • private function mergeParams(array $params, $templateName = null)
• I'd shy away from public methods that work with a collection, such as addParameters(). In my experience, these methods cause a fundamental confusion: does it merge or overwrite an existing set of parameters? One way of solving this is to do as we did in PSR-7 with attributes. We omitted withAttributes(), and instead provided only withAttribute() and withoutAttribute(); the first overwrites or creates the single name header, while the second removes it. I suggest doing the same here:
  • public function addDefaultParam($templateName, $name, $value)
  • public function removeDefaultParam($templateName, $name)
• Related to the previous point, I'd require the template name, and provide a constant in the template interface for specifying "all templates"; users who want to specify a global default template parameter would use something like $renderer->addDefaultParam($renderer::ALL_TEMPLATES, 'url', $url).

Finally, you'll need to rebase, as #139 renamed TemplateInterface to TemplateRendererInterface, and appended the name Renderer to all impementations.

With regards to the ZF2 implementation, I'd handle it in createModel(), merging the default parameters with those passed in.

[kynx]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll get on with that then.

[weierophinney]

@kynx I've been working on the suggestions this morning as well; I can do a PR against your branch shortly, if you'd like.

[kynx]

@weierophinney Please do! Looks like I messed up the rebase tho :(

[weierophinney]

@kynx — I've created #151 so I could run Travis-CI checks; at this point, those are all passing. I've also added documentation of the new interface method.

We have two options at this point:

• I can merge Incorporated feedback for #143 #151, closing both that issue and this one.
• You can merge my branch to yours, push your branch, and I can merge this PR and close Incorporated feedback for #143 #151; this would be particularly useful if you have any additions or changes you want to include beyond what I've done.

Let me know!

[weierophinney]

@kynx I've gone ahead and merged both branches at this time; thanks for the new feature!