What are the best practices for placing common data for many views (twig), eg. main menu, bottom menu, breadcrumbs, etc.
I know that I can do it using embedded controllers, but it is not very efficient.
Many commonly used things can be accessed by using the built in variabble app, ie {{ app.user }} returns the currently logged in user.
If you need something else you can write your own twig extensions.
Related
I have an application build with Symfony 3.3 and Twig that will be distributed to more customers. I'm using parameters.yml to customize its behavior and it seems to work well.
Where I have an issue is with twig templates: although the customers will use most of the templates as they are, they'll need to customize some parts like CSS styles, general layout and do occasional design overrides.
The options I have identified are:
Have a full set of templates for each customer. The issue is that the upgrades will be a nightmare as we have to patch each template and account for differences
Customize templates via YML files. The problem is that it gets too complicated soon and the number of parameters is potentially huge
Deliver a set of templates in app/Resources/views and allow the customer to override any of the templates by creating another file with the same name in another folder
Deliver a set of templates in AppBundle/Resources/views and let customers override them in app/Resources/views
Create the application as a Symfony bundle (ie. MyAppBundle) and deploy the application to each customer by including the MyAppBundle via composer. I like this solution a lot, but I do not know whether it is possible to implement is easily.
Do you have any suggestion on how to approach this problem?
I think the best way in your case is to think about the main parts and the customer parts and then build blocks and overwrite all parts that are relevant for the customer for example the CSS or anything else. If you know that there are special part you can build macros for example.
With the Block concept you can predefine the template but the customer has the ability to overwrite that part you've defined with it's own.
With Twig you have a lot of possibilities to solve such a problem.
Drupal 8 use that Theming concept.
https://www.chapterthree.com/blog/twig-concepts-drupal-8-themes-part-ii
Perhaps you can take a look how they have solved that and you can find a good solution for your problem.
I'm looking for an easy easy way to determine which templates are being rendered on a page. Since it doesn't look like this information is currently being logged anywhere I'm thinking I'd have to modify some part(s) of the pipeline but I'm not sure what would be the most effective way of doing it.
AFAIK symfony does not has something like this out of box.A possible solution is to add html comments in your twig files that state the file rendered. like that you can know which files buy looking to page source.
I'm creating a menu system using the Tree Doctrine extenion and I want to create a Twig extension to display the menu based on the requested parent node e.g. {% display_menu(side_menu) %}. This function will be in the base twig template (i.e. the menu is on every page of the website).
As I'll be storing the Menu structure with Doctrine, I thought I'd need to access the MenuRepository within the Twig extension so the first problem I came across was getting an Entity Manager into it. When looking for a solution, a few people have said that this is bad practice, which makes sense as a Twig extension is part of the View.
So although there is a solution (linked in similar questions) to my problem, my question is, is there a way I can accomplish it using good practice? Or is there a better way of doing it in the first place?
Making entities aware of any services — including entity managers — is a bad practice. There's nothing wrong about injecting an EM into a Twig extension. Although, I'd rather inject a model manager to a Twig extension, so that the extension is not aware of the persistence layer — it's the job of the manager layer.
So, I'd have MenuManager that's aware of repositores/entity managers and inject it to an extension.
(I've posted this on the drupal forum too btw)
I'm converting the company websites to use Drupal, or at least trying to check that its going to be the best way forward. I have a background in PHP development, and I'm currently using the CakePHP framwork. I've built this site (not my design) and I can see how to replicate most of the functionality using Drupal, most likely using the CCK module.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yk6u8mt
As you can see from the homepage:
A user chooses a country.
The country is passed using an ajax call to a script that decides which phone is best based on 'in country' network coverage.
A div is shown recommending the visitor the best phone for that country.
I'm wondering how to go about this in Drupal, I'm definitely not after a step by step guide, I just want to know if this kind of thing is possible with Drupal, and what approach to use.
If someone can help that would be superb. Thanks.
Okay, so you've got a path you're defining in hook_menu, which is where your form is being presented - or else you've got it set up as a webform in a node, that could work too.
Either way, in your form you're going to be using AHAH - check out http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/developer--topics--forms_api_reference.html/6#ahah and http://drupal.org/node/348475 .
Basically, you're going to define another path in hook_menu that's of type MENU_CALLBACK, and which will receive the country as input, and then will return the div that you'll display on the screen.
One core example of AHAH that may be useful to you is where you're entering a password and it lets you know if the password is secure enough - check that out.
Edit: There's also some good examples at http://drupal.org/project/examples.
I would look into using CCK and views. you can set up filters for the views. If filters don't work, you have the ability to include php code. I have also successfully added jquery code in the header of a view through which I was then able to have my view filtered by what is typed in a text box.
Coming from CakePHP using Drupal is a pain in the a** - even more for developers.
It's application structure might be designed to ease extensibility but this only means you have a system to enable your own plugins and themes.
While modules are basically the M+C-part the themes are the V-part of an MVC-application. The problem is that this seperation is not very strict in Drupal - in fact you have to break it sometimes in order to make things work (e.g. you have to include a theme_mymodule_myfunction() into your module as default output which you then can override with your theme using mytheme_mymodule_myfunction() ) And don't even bother looking for classes ( see http://drupal.org/node/547518 ).
Also there is no real link from a module to a theme. On many occations this is a good thing as you can switch modules and themes seperatly without creating a problem. For application builders coming from CakePHP (or any other framework) you often feel a lack of "wholesomeness" - you create parts for a base software and have to live with it's drawbacks.
IMHO I wouldn't recommend this step. Drupal is fine if you have to manage a website and might add a few modules to add neccessary value (image gallery etc.) but I definetly don't recommend it as a base for a customized web-app.
I'm trying to build a template system in CodeIgniter like wordpress. Does anyone have some links or tips to share with me on this matter?
I would like to create several functions that I can call from those php template pages like in wordpress. For example to display the comments from an item or loop through something, or even a tag_could.
the views folder would containt the different template folders & files.
and yes there is smarty, but no I don't want to use it.
Have a look at my Template library. It supports modules, themes, partials and layouts so you can create one main layout for each theme then have modular views if you wish.
While you are not a fan of Smarty, you might be interested in trying Dwoo. They are both very similar but Dwoo has the advantage of not sucking major donkey balls, which is Smarty's main downfall. I have written an extension for the CodeIgniter Parser library to get it to use Dwoo, which integrates perfectly with my Template library.
Between the two you can make pretty powerful, theme-able MVC applications.
Check out
http://www.williamsconcepts.com/ci/codeigniter/libraries/template/index.html
Template is right for you if:
You feel like using views can be clunky, especially when "embedding" views.
You don't like calling header, footer, and other global views from every Controller method.
You prefer having one "master template" that can be changed for any controller in order to meet unique application design needs.
You don't want to drastically alter the way you interface controllers and views.
You like clear, thorough documentation on par with CodeIgniter's User Guide.