Cakephp : Check if view element exists - view

Question

Is there a way to check if an element exists for a view?
I want to load a different element according to a category it belongs to but not all categories have an element for it...

Answer 1

As of CakePHP version 2.3 you can use the View's elementExists method:
if($this->elementExists($name)) { ... }
In older versions of 2.x you can do:
if($this->_getElementFilename($name)) { ... }
But sadly in version 1.3 it looks like the only way is to know the full path and do something like:
if(file_exists($path . 'elements' . DS . $name . $ext)) { ... }
That is what they do in the 1.3 source code, but there is some complexity around getting $path from various plugins and checking each of those paths. (See link below.)
Sources:
http://api.cakephp.org/2.3/class-View.html#_elementExists
http://api.cakephp.org/2.0/source-class-View.html#722
http://api.cakephp.org/1.3/source-class-View.html#380

Answer 2

set element name in controller:
$default_element = 'my_element';
$element = 'my_cat_element';
if ($this->theme) {
$element_path = APP . 'views' . DS . 'themed' . DS . $this->theme . 'elements' . DS . $element . DS . $this-ext;
} else {
$element_path = APP . 'views' . DS . 'elements' . DS . $element . $this-ext;
}
if (!file_exists($element_path)) {
$element = $default_element;
}

Answer 3

You can always load an element specific to a category 'on demand' by telling it so from the controller. For example:
Within Controller Action:
$this->set('elementPath', "directory_name/$categoryName");
Within the View (this can also be tried exactly within a Layout):
<?php
if (!empty($elementPath)) { // you can also set a default $elementPath somewhere else, just in case
echo $this->element($elementPath);
}
?>
In fact, there is even other ways to achieve this. If the element is going to be loaded within a layout, then the set() method shown above can be specified from the view itself. Or, it can even be fetched from url parameters, like:
Within the View or Layout:
<?php
$elementPath = $this->params['url']['category']; // note that the param array can vary according how you set the url; see http://book.cakephp.org/#!/view/963/The-Parameters-Attribute-params
echo $this->element($elementPath);
?>
Of course, you will always have to specify, but the same would go for checking if the file exists.