base\Controller render()

Renders a view and applies layout if available.

The view to be rendered can be specified in one of the following formats:

• path alias (e.g. "@app/views/site/index");
• absolute path within application (e.g. "//site/index"): the view name starts with double slashes. The actual view file will be looked for under the view path of the application.
• absolute path within module (e.g. "/site/index"): the view name starts with a single slash. The actual view file will be looked for under the view path of $module.
• relative path (e.g. "index"): the actual view file will be looked for under $viewPath.

To determine which layout should be applied, the following two steps are conducted:

1. In the first step, it determines the layout name and the context module:

• If $layout is specified as a string, use it as the layout name and $module as the context module;
• If $layout is null, search through all ancestor modules of this controller and find the first module whose layout is not null. The layout and the corresponding module are used as the layout name and the context module, respectively. If such a module is not found or the corresponding layout is not a string, it will return false, meaning no applicable layout.

1. In the second step, it determines the actual layout file according to the previously found layout name and context module. The layout name can be:

• a path alias (e.g. "@app/views/layouts/main");
• an absolute path (e.g. "/main"): the layout name starts with a slash. The actual layout file will be looked for under the layout path of the application;
• a relative path (e.g. "main"): the actual layout file will be looked for under the layout path of the context module.

If the layout name does not contain a file extension, it will use the default one .php.