Codeigniter: Best way to structure partial views

@Reinis answer probably hit the spot correctly for older versions of CI less than 2.0 however alot has changed since then, so I thought I’d answer this question with an up to date method of what I’ve done.

Most of it is similar to @Reinis method and also described here:http://codeigniter.com/wiki/MY_Controller_-_how_to_extend_the_CI_Controller

However here are the updates ive done:

Step 1: Create a MY_Controller.php file and store it in /application/core

Step 2: In your MY_Controller.php file put in the following contents:

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class MY_Controller extends CI_Controller {

    function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    function _output($content)
    {
        // Load the base template with output content available as $content
        $data['content'] = &$content;
        echo($this->load->view('base', $data, true));
    }

}

Step 3: Create a sample controller to base off of MY_Controller.php, in this case I will create a welcome.php controller inside of application/controllers/ with the following content:

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Welcome extends MY_Controller {

    function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    public function index()
    {
        $this->load->view('welcome_message');
    }

}

Once you have these controllers set, do the following:

Step 4: Create a base view inside of /application/views and name the file base.php, the content of the file should be similar to this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if IE 7 ]><html lang="en" class="ie7"><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8 ]><html lang="en" class="ie8"><![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--><html lang="en"><!--<![endif]-->
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8" />
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1" />
        <title></title> 
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3675135/<?php echo base_url(); ?>stylesheets/reset.css" media="screen" />
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="section_main">
            <div id="content">
                <?php echo $content; ?>
            </div>
        </div>
        <?php $this->load->view('shared/scripts.php'); ?>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Step 5: Create another view in /application/views and name this view welcome_message.php, the content of this file will be:

<h1>Welcome</h1>

Once, all this is complete, you should see the following output:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if IE 7 ]><html lang="en" class="ie7"><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8 ]><html lang="en" class="ie8"><![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--><html lang="en"><!--<![endif]-->
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8" />
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1" />
        <title></title> 
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://somedomain.local/stylesheets/reset.css" media="screen" />
    </head>
    <body>
        <!-- BEGIN: section_main -->
        <div id="section_main">
            <div id="content">
                <h1>Welcome</h1>
            </div>
        </div>
        <!-- END: section_main -->
        <script src="/path/to/js.js"></script>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

As you can see <h1>Welcome</h1> was put into the base template.

Resources:

Obviously @Reinis initial response
http://codeigniter.com/wiki/Extending_Controller_with_masterpage_template_funtionality

Hope this helps anyone else coming across this technique.

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