How do I pass a variable to the layout using Laravel' Blade templating?

In Laravel 4, my controller uses a Blade layout:

class PagesController extends BaseController {
    protected $layout = 'layouts.master';
}

The master layout has outputs the variable title and then displays a view:

...
<title>{{ $title }}</title>
...
@yield('content')
....

However, in my controller I only appear to be able to pass variables to the subview, not the layout. For example, an action could be:

public function index()
{
    $this->layout->content = View::make('pages/index', array('title' => 'Home page'));
}

This will only pass the $title variable to the content section of the view. How can I provide that variable to the whole view, or at the very least the master layout?

If you're using @extends in your content layout you can use this:

@extends('master', ['title' => $title])

Note that same as above works with children, like:

@include('views.subView', ['my_variable' => 'my-value'])

Usage

Then where variable is passed to, use it like:

<title>{{ $title ?? 'Default Title' }}</title>

For future Google'rs that use Laravel 5, you can now also use it with includes,

@include('views.otherView', ['variable' => 1])

In the Blade Template : define a variable like this

@extends('app',['title' => 'Your Title Goes Here'])
@section('content')

And in the app.blade.php or any other of your choice ( I'm just following default Laravel 5 setup )

<title>{{ $title or 'Default title Information if not set explicitly' }}</title>

This is my first answer here. Hope it works.Good luck!