I think it depends on the situation whether your solution is overkill. If you add this functionality to almost each element, then it is probably overkill ;-)

I like to keep my view logicless ( as in that anything with embedded display logic comes in via a renderElement call )

Using the reusable requestAction trick and some cacheing as well as being very careful when i let the view grab the data or the controller. I find this works quite well.

Also if you never see a requestAction or more than a couple of lines of concurrent php in a view file. If you need to find the logic its in the elements folder in subfolders named by controller.

Easy.

@SebJ: As the others already said, it depends on the situation. If it is only a little bit of text that’s different, than it is overkill to create three views. On the other hand if you have for each case a full-fledged page with specific information, then it’s imho better to create separate views.

depends on the complexity of the view i guess, for simple “no found” message, many would agree to go the second approach, whereas a complex not found view with suggested information such as ebay or google not-found view.. probably the first approach.

that is why many template engine, there is a presentational construct loop-else for view. for example, h2o template which i created use following syntax.

{% for post in posts %}
{{ post.name }}
{{ post.content }}
{% else %}
there a currently not blog posts
{% endfor%}