The php_self context variable

Each Prestashop page has its own name, setup in the appropriate controller. It’s the body id assigned to a page as the $page_name variable in smarty. However, if you tried to get the page name from within a module, you might have noticed it’s only assigned to smarty. So is there a way to target each specific page from within a module? Yes, indeed. Here is the code:

$this->context->controller->php_self

It can be really useful if you only want to target specific pages within a module. Let’s see a practical example.

Target specific pages from a module’s hook

Say, for the only sake of this example, that we only want to display a top of pages module if the current page is the homepage. Let’s use blocksearch.

In this case, We would only need to edit blocksearch.php, locate the hookTop method:

	public function hookTop($params)
	{
		if (!$this->isCached('blocksearch-top.tpl', $this->getCacheId('blocksearch-top')))
		{
			$this->calculHookCommon($params);
			$this->smarty->assign('blocksearch_type', 'top');
		}

		return $this->display(__FILE__, 'blocksearch-top.tpl', $this->getCacheId('blocksearch-top'));
	}

And add this at the beginning of the function:

if('index' != $this->context->controller->php_self)
	return false;

We a re simply telling it: if the current page is not the homepage, kill the module so it doesn’t display anything.

Just think at the possibilities at this point: you can display different content, and do diffrent things from the same hook, depending on the current page.

How to? First, decide the pages that need specific behaviors. Use var_dump($this->context->controller->php_self) to check each page’s exact name. Then simply add a switch or if operator, that checks the current page name and acts properly each time, like:

if('index' == $this->context->controller->php_self)
	// Do something and display a template for the homepage
else if('category' == $this->context->controller->php_self)
	// Do something and display a template if we are in the category page
else // not in any of the 2 pages above
	return false: // don't display anything

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