8 Laravel 11 Basics: Views

Introduction

Of course, it's not practical to return entire HTML documents as strings directly from your routes and controllers. Thankfully, views provide a convenient way to place all of our HTML in separate files. Views separate your controller/application logic from your presentation logic and are stored in the resources/views directory. When using Laravel, view templates are usually written using the Blade templating language. A simple view might look something like this:

Hello, {{ $name }}

Since this view is stored at resources/views/greeting.blade.php, we may return it using the global view helper like so:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('greeting', ['name' => 'James']);
});

Looking for more information on how to write Blade templates? Check out the full Blade documentation to get started.

Writing Views in React / Vue

Instead of writing their frontend templates in PHP via Blade, many developers have begun to prefer to write their templates using React or Vue. Laravel makes this painless thanks to Inertia, a library that makes it a cinch to tie your React / Vue frontend to your Laravel backend without the typical complexities of building an SPA. Our Breeze and Jetstream starter kits give you a great starting point for your next Laravel application powered by Inertia. In addition, the Laravel Bootcamp provides a full demonstration of building a Laravel application powered by Inertia, including examples in Vue and React.

Creating and Rendering Views

You may create a view by placing a file with the .blade.php extension in your application's resources/views directory or by using the make:view Artisan command:

php artisan make:view greeting

The .blade.php extension informs the framework that the file contains a Blade template. Blade templates contain HTML as well as Blade directives that allow you to easily echo values, create "if" statements, iterate over data, and more. Once you have created a view, you may return it from one of your application's routes or controllers using the global view helper:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('greeting', ['name' => 'James']);
});

Views may also be returned using the View facade:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
return View::make('greeting', ['name' => 'James']);

As you can see, the first argument passed to the view helper corresponds to the name of the view file in the resources/views directory. The second argument is an array of data that should be made available to the view. In this case, we are passing the name variable, which is displayed in the view using Blade syntax.

Nested View Directories

Views may also be nested within subdirectories of the resources/views directory. "Dot" notation may be used to reference nested views. For example, if your view is stored at resources/views/admin/profile.blade.php, you may return it from one of your application's routes/controllers like so:

return view('admin.profile', $data);

View directory names should not contain the . character.

Creating the First Available View

Using the View facade's first method, you may create the first view that exists in a given array of views. This may be useful if your application or package allows views to be customized or overwritten:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
return View::first(['custom.admin', 'admin'], $data);

Determining if a View Exists

If you need to determine if a view exists, you may use the View facade. The exists method will return true if the view exists:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
if (View::exists('admin.profile')) {
    // ...
}

Passing Data to Views

As you saw in the previous examples, you may pass an array of data to views to make that data available to the view:

return view('greetings', ['name' => 'Victoria']);

When passing information in this manner, the data should be an array with key/value pairs. After providing data to a view, you can then access each value within your view using the data's keys, such as {{ $name }}.

As an alternative to passing a complete array of data to the view helper function, you may use the with method to add individual pieces of data to the view. The with method returns an instance of the view object so that you can continue chaining methods before returning the view:

return view('greeting')
            ->with('name', 'Victoria')
            ->with('occupation', 'Astronaut');

Sharing Data With All Views

Occasionally, you may need to share data with all views that are rendered by your application. You may do so using the View facade's share method. Typically, you should place calls to the share method within a service provider's boot method. You are free to add them to the App\Providers\AppServiceProvider class or generate a separate service provider to house them:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
public function boot()
{
    View::share('key', 'value');
}

View Composers

View composers are callbacks or class methods that are called when a view is rendered. If you have data that you want bound to a view each time that view is rendered, a view composer can help you organize that logic into a single location.

For this example, let's register the view composers within a service provider. We'll use the View facade to access the underlying Illuminate\View\Factory instance. The composer method accepts the name of the view and a callback or class method that should be executed when the view is rendered:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
public function boot()
{
    View::composer('profile', function ($view) {
        $view->with('count', User::count());
    });
}

Attaching a Composer to Multiple Views

You may attach a view composer to multiple views at once by passing an array of views as the first argument to the composer method:

use App\Views\Composers\MultiComposer;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
View::composer(
    ['profile', 'dashboard'], MultiComposer::class
);

The composer method also accepts the * character as a wildcard, allowing you to attach a composer to all views:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
use Illuminate\View\View;
 
View::composer('*', function (View $view) {
    // ...
});

View Creators

View "creators" are very similar to view composers; however, they are executed immediately after the view is instantiated instead of waiting until the view is about to render. To register a view creator, use the creator method:

use App\View\Creators\ProfileCreator;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
 
View::creator('profile', ProfileCreator::class);

Optimizing Views

By default, Blade template views are compiled on demand. When a request is executed that renders a view, Laravel will determine if a compiled version of the view exists. If the file exists, Laravel will then determine if the uncompiled view has been modified more recently than the compiled view. If the compiled view either does not exist, or the uncompiled view has been modified, Laravel will recompile the view. Compiling views during the request may have a small negative impact on performance, so Laravel provides the view:cache Artisan command to precompile all of the views utilized by your application. For increased performance, you may wish to run this command as part of your deployment process:

php artisan view:cache

You may use the view:clear command to clear the view cache:

php artisan view:clear

Reference

For more information, refer to the Laravel documentation by the Laravel Team.