Display the login form in the layouts main.php in Yii - yii

Question

I want to change the the "views/layouts/main.php" to display the login form whenever the user isn't authenticated.
So I changed the "siteController" actionIndex like that:
public function actionIndex() {
$loginForm = new LoginForm();
$this->render('index', array('loginForm'=>$loginForm));
}
And then call it in "views/layouts/main.php" like that:
if(Yii::app()->user->isGuest):
echo $loginForm;
else :
echo 'JJJ';
endif;
Then when I go to my website, It display the error: "Undefined variable: loginForm".
I don't know how to fix this? :(

Answer 1

Define new property in your controller class:
public $loginForm;
In your main.php access it like:
echo $this->loginForm;
If you pass variable in your render method it will be available inside view file only, but not in layout file.

Answer 2

It's because the index template is loaded before main template. So, better way to do hat you want, is to define a public property in your Controller. I suggest you to define this property in Controller class because SiteController and *Controller extends it.
Then, you can run this.
if(Yii::app()->user->isGuest) {
echo $this->loginForm;
} else {
echo 'JJJ';
}
Pay attention, because in this way of work you go out MVC pattern. This way of work force you to define a LoginForm in each action. I suggest you to do that:
Leave clean your calls to render file.
public function actionIndex() {
$this->render('index');
}
And add a getLoginForm method in you Controller class obtaining:
if(Yii::app()->user->isGuest) {
echo $this->getLoginForm();
} else {
echo 'JJJ';
}

Answer 3

There are a couple issues here. Firstly, you are creating an object called $loginForm and assigning it a value of new LoginForm();
$loginForm = new LoginForm();
I'm not sure if you are doing this on purpose and LoginForm() is a function or a method that returns something, but I have a feeling you were intending to do:
$loginForm = new LoginForm;
Which creates a new instance of the class LoginForm (which is a default Yii webapp CFormModel class). Even if that is the case, there are better ways to do this.
The easiest way is to call a renderPartial of the already existing login.php view (located in protected/views/site/login.php) inside your index.php view like so:
if(Yii::app()->user->isGuest) {
$this->renderPartial("loginform",array("model"=>new LoginForm));
} else {
echo 'JJJ';
}
This renders the view login.php (without rendering the layout because we have already rendered the layout - here's the docs on render and renderPartial) and pass it a new instance of the model LoginForm assigned to a variable called $model.
You will most likely have to edit the look of login.php view to make it "fit", but keep in mind that this view is being used in the SiteController actionLogin as well.
All that's left to do then is modify your actionIndex to handle the form submission (you can just copy the existing SiteController actionLogin functionality)
Another nicer solution would be to create a widget for the login form which can be used all over your application. I'm not going to go into that, but you can read up about it here on SO or check out this tutorial or this one.