How to handle same code in a component and an action ?

A common question is how one can include php code, which is actually used in a component with something like a ajax call or common spoken, another action.

This article tries to show you the solution.

Imagine you have a list of news, which is fetched within an component.

<?php 

class newsComponents extends sfComponents{

    public function executeList(){
        // fetch news objects from the model
    }
}

The according template _list.php of this component action looks like this:

<?php
echo "Here is a news list.....";

Continue imagine that you want to refresh this news list within an ajax call. How do you do this without repeat yourself?

The answer is: With a kind of wrapper action, which does nothing more than including the news component.

<?php
class newsActions extends sfActions
{
    
    public function executeList(){
        // no code is needed here
        // because we do all the code stuff within the included component
    }
}

The content of the template listSuccess.php:

<?php
include_component('news','list');

And you are done.

Now you can do a ajax call to news/list or include the component in another action to retrieve the same output and to run through the same php code.