Can the View access the context?

[LostKobrakai]

The latter is the way to go:

Controllers take the request and handle it, while Views should do a pure transformation of the inputs the controller provided to the needed output format (html, json, …).

Data transformation in controllers instead of views?

I handle it like that: The data send by the controller should be the minimal data needed to send a response no matter what type is may be. The view should then transform the data into the specific response (html, json, …).

@thojanssens1

The template passes the @categories from conn.assigns to the View

The template is part of the view module, not something separate.