Using clips in YII

One of the Yii features you can use in your views is clips. The basic idea is that you can record
some output and then reuse it later in a view. A good example will be defining additional
content regions for your layout and filling them elsewhere.
Getting ready
Set up a new application using yiic webapp.
How to do it...
1. For our example, we need to define two regions in our layout: beforeContent and
footer. Open protected/views/layouts/main.php and insert the following
just before the content output (<?php echo $content; ?>):
<?php if(!empty($this->clips['beforeContent'])) echo
$this->clips['beforeContent']?>
Then, insert the following into <div id="footer">:
<?php if(!empty($this->clips['footer'])) echo
$this->clips['footer']?>
2. That is it. Now, we need to fill these regions somehow. We will use a controller
action for the beforeContent region. Open protected/controllers/
SiteController.php and add the following to actionIndex:
$this->beginClip('beforeContent');
echo 'Your IP is '.Yii::app()->request->userHostAddress;
$this->endClip();
3. As for footer, we will set its content from a view. Open protected/views/site/
index.php and add the following:
<?php $this->beginClip('footer')?>
This application was built with Yii.
<?php $this->endClip()?>
4. Now, when you open your website's index page, you should get your IP just before the
page content and "built with" note in the footer.
How it works...
We mark regions with the code that just checks for existence of a clip specified and, if
clip exists, the code outputs it. Then, we record content for clips we defined using special
controller methods named beginClip and endClip.