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Slim does not have a view layer like traditional MVC frameworks. Instead, Slim’s “view” is the HTTP response. Each Slim application route is responsible for preparing and returning an appropriate PSR 7 response object.

Slim’s “view” is the HTTP response.

That being said, the Slim project provides the Twig-View and PHP-View components to help you render templates to a PSR7 Response object.

The slim/twig-view component

The Twig-View PHP component helps you render Twig templates in your application. This component is available on Packagist, and it’s easy to install with Composer like this:

composer require slim/twig-view

Figure 1: Install slim/twig-view component.

Next, you need to register the component as a service on the Slim app’s container like this:

<?php
// Create app
$app = new \Slim\App();

// Get container
$container = $app->getContainer();

// Register component on container
$container['view'] = function ($container) {
    $view = new \Slim\Views\Twig('path/to/templates', [
        'cache' => 'path/to/cache'
    ]);
    $view->addExtension(new \Slim\Views\TwigExtension(
        $container['router'],
        $container['request']->getUri()
    ));

    return $view;
};

Figure 2: Register slim/twig-view component with container.

Note : “cache” could be set to false to disable it, see also ‘auto_reload’ option, useful in development environment. For more information, see Twig environment options

Now you can use the slim/twig-view component service inside an app route to render a template and write it to a PSR 7 Response object like this:

// Render Twig template in route
$app->get('/hello/{name}', function ($request, $response, $args) {
    return $this->view->render($response, 'profile.html', [
        'name' => $args['name']
    ]);
})->setName('profile');

// Run app
$app->run();

Figure 3: Render template with slim/twig-view container service.

In this example, $this->view invoked inside the route callback is a reference to the \Slim\Views\Twig instance returned by the view container service. The \Slim\Views\Twig instance’s render() method accepts a PSR 7 Response object as its first argument, the Twig template path as its second argument, and an array of template variables as its final argument. The render() method returns a new PSR 7 Response object whose body is the rendered Twig template.

The path_for() method

The slim/twig-view component exposes a custom path_for() function to your Twig templates. You can use this function to generate complete URLs to any named route in your Slim application. The path_for() function accepts two arguments:

A route name
A hash of route placeholder names and replacement values

The second argument’s keys should correspond to the selected route’s pattern placeholders. This is an example Twig template that draws a link URL for the “profile” named route shown in the example Slim application above.

{% extends "layout.html" %}

{% block body %}
<h1>User List</h1>
<ul>
    <li><a href="{{ path_for('profile', { 'name': 'josh' }) }}">Josh</a></li>
</ul>
{% endblock %}

The slim/php-view component

The PHP-View PHP component helps you render PHP templates. This component is available on Packagist and can be installed using Composer like this:

composer require slim/php-view

Figure 4: Install slim/php-view component.

To register this component as a service on Slim App’s container, do this:

<?php
// Create app
$app = new \Slim\App();

// Get container
$container = $app->getContainer();

// Register component on container
$container['view'] = function ($container) {
    return new \Slim\Views\PhpRenderer('path/to/templates/with/trailing/slash/');
};

Figure 5: Register slim/php-view component with container.

Use the view component to render a PHP view like this:

// Render Twig template in route
$app->get('/hello/{name}', function ($request, $response, $args) {
    return $this->view->render($response, 'profile.html', [
        'name' => $args['name']
    ]);
})->setName('profile');

// Run app
$app->run();

Figure 6: Render template with slim/twig-view container service.

Other template systems

You are not limited to the Twig-View and PHP-View components. You can use any PHP template system provided that you ultimately write the rendered template output to the PSR 7 Response object’s body.