As a simple example, let us say your controller has a list of book data that it wants to have rendered by a view. The controller script might look something like this:

<?php
// use a model to get the data for book authors and titles.
$data = array(
    array(
        'author' => 'Hernando de Soto',
        'title' => 'The Mystery of Capitalism'
    ),
    array(
        'author' => 'Henry Hazlitt',
        'title' => 'Economics in One Lesson'
    ),
    array(
        'author' => 'Milton Friedman',
        'title' => 'Free to Choose'
    )
);

// now assign the book data to a Zend_View instance
Zend::loadClass('Zend_View');
$view = new Zend_View();
$view->books = $data;

// and render a view script called "booklist.php"
echo $view->render('booklist.php');
?>
        

Now we need the associated view script, "booklist.php". This is a PHP script like any other, with one exception: it executes inside the scope of the Zend_View instance, which means that references to $this point to the Zend_View instance properties and methods. (Variables assigned to the instance by the controller are public properties of the Zend_View instance.) Thus, a very basic view script could look like this:

<?php if ($this->books): ?>
    
    <!-- A table of some books. -->
    <table>
        <tr>
            <th>Author</th>
            <th>Title</th>
        </tr>
        
        <?php foreach ($this->books as $key => $val): ?>
        <tr>
            <td><?php echo $this->escape($val['author']) ?></td>
            <td><?php echo $this->escape($val['title']) ?></td>
        </tr>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
        
    </table>
    
<?php else: ?>
    
    <p>There are no books to display.</p>
    
<?php endif; ?>
        

Note how we use the "escape()" method to apply output escaping to variables.