How should i put total number of articles on every page - symfony

I've just started to learn symfony 2, and I have a small question
For example I have a site with articles. I want to show the total number of articles on every page, but every page is generated by some bundle.
So I need kind of some common script to do initialization of main variables, such as articles count.
How should I do it?

A simple way to achieve this is to have an action that fetches and outputs the total number of articles. You can then render that action from within other views (ex: $view['actions']->render('ArticlesBundle:Articles:getCount')). If you want this displayed on every page of your site, I would recommend rendering it from within your base.html.php view (or base.html.twig depending on which templating engine you're using). I'd also recommend caching it somehow, so you're not constantly hitting the database for a count that may not change very often.
See the docs on Embedding Controllers for more detail.
You can further expand on this example to define other 'main variables' that you want to use throughout your site. One idea is to define a service object whose purpose is to hold these variables, and then access its contents when you need to.
By the way, the title of your question is not descriptive of your problem, please consider rephrasing it.

Related

Is the best way to update sections of a dynamic webpage - by rewriting the file every time?

At my company (a custom retail e-commerce website) we have a homepage with various sections on the page for promotions/sales/events. These sections may appear in any order, one after the other. The order of the sections are saved in a database table called mainpage_sections with an order column (int).
The present method we use for updating the homepage when the order of sections is changed, is by running a callback method that automatically rewrites the aspx View file itself, in HTML, with the new order of the sections. It does not pull the sections from the database and dynamically render them according to their order.
This struck me as being opposite to best principles and very messy. I asked why we didn't use a database read instead, but I was told that since this website is visited thousands of times a day, and the order of the sections rarely changes, it makes more sense to update the file itself, instead of running thousands of extra database reads just for people visiting the homepage of the website.
Does this approach make sense? What is the best-principle, recommended approach here? Is something like output caching a better choice?
Overwriting a code file does seem weird. What if you stored the ordering in a separate JSON file, and only overwrote the JSON file?

Consume a WordPress site data from another WordPress site

I am facing an issue with wordpress. I have two sites. On the first site there is a form that takes inputs and stores values in custom fields to be later used for various calculations on that site.
On the other website, I need to access these same values from the first website and use them thoughout the second website in multiple elements. So I've come up with an idea that because those stored values on the first website are already being displayed (as in, they are in some HTML elements in a visible page), I could just get that first website content and than do one of two things:
Create similar custom fields in the second website, and write a function in functions.php that would take the values from the first website and update custom fields in the second website every time it loads, so then I could use those values throughout the second website (it seems to me that this is a stupid solution).
Write a function in functions.php (in the second website, the one that needs to receive the values from the first) that would create javascript variables from that first website, so that could be used to populate all the elements I need.
Maybe there is some much better solution for all of this. To be fair, this is the first time I am doing something like this, so you could say I am very unexperienced.
Is there another better solution for this? And if there isn't, which of the two solutions listed above is a better one?
Though there are many possible options and that may generate debates based on individuals' experiences and or prevailing conditions, you can easily achieve your intended goal by consuming data from your site one into your site two, then, apply whatever necessary logic and actions needed there (in your site two).
Using the latest version of WordPress, you can take leverage on the in-built REST API in order to access the desired data from site one within site two.

When creating web pages, what is the recommended approach for Add/Edit?

Lets say you are developing an web app that requires that you are able to Add/Edit items. The item form contains several input control. Would you separate the add/edit pages or use the page for add/edit and control via querystring (i.e. ItemAddEdit.aspx?isEdit=1)
The advantage I see in separating is that it is easier for the (non-technical) user to type the page and to determine whether it is add or edit. Also, when there would be specific changes to each page (if ever), it would be easier to change.
For the single page, well, you reuse code which eliminates some duplicate code and avoid possible problems.
And no, I can't use routing.
This is generally something which could be a subjective thing, because there's as many ways of doing things as there are coders, and a lot of it can be depending on how your system is set up generally.
But, if I were to recommend, I'd say the way you should do it if working with asp.net web-forms is to make two web pages (add/ edit) and then you use a user-control on those to group up the shared logic between the two pages. After all - that's why we have user controls.
In this way you can have both of your situations, by keeping logic in one file/class, but still have two entry points.
This would also mirror more how MVC does it, which could be considered a plus.
That being said - if your administration functionality is behind login etc, there's nothing to hinder for actually doing it in one and separate with the query string approach, and then just load the data if editing or display "empty"/base data when creating.
You shouldn't have the user type the addresses anyway, but click through the links to follow your flow, so the query string should be a minimal issue.
But for the sake of keeping your functionality clean and divided, I'd personally recommend going for two page / usercontrol approach.

Drupal - Show content on specific page

Am I able to add the following field to a content type, so that each piece of content I create can be conditioned to a page?
Or is there a module to extend Publishing Options, where by it adds all the pages I have created (just like 'Promote to Front Page')?
If not, why is no one doing this? As a new user to Drupal this seems like it would be a handy operation. (I have already tried this module but it doesn't achieve the results I'm after).
If none of these solutions are available, what would be the best alternative way of doing this?
I've posted this question on Stack Exchange for Drupal but I need a quick answer and there seems to be a bigger community here :D
You should use Context. With Context, you'll be able to manage contextual conditions and reactions for your drupal like Regions.
Have you used Views? it is one of the most common used drupal modules. It doesn't extend publishing options directly but it does replace it in a way. You can say by example put a list of al content-types: your_own_Content_type that have the publishing options of promoted to front-page. then sort them by title, date, what ever you like.
you could also create only one view and create multiple blocks out of it. you have to understand the logic of drupal: if you want different blocks on different pages, you have to create the different pages AND different blocks
create the view for one type of content-type and make one block out of it. put this block on the desired page. All your other blocks are made with the same view, just adjust a condition in your view and create a new block out of it. You should also put all your blocks in the same region, and set the to the right pages
here you can find a lot of documentation if you run into any problems... drupal.org/project/views
Views is the best at creating a slideshow of images or any type of data on your site.
Used in combination with nodequeue it might offer near or the full functionality you are trying to achieve (check this out ... and this too) - but I don't understand your question entirely.
By my opinion Views is too complicated task for much simple request.
There is a few ideas for solution:
Easy way - You can create a specific template file or add some if statments to the node.tpl.php(specific tpl better)
For minor changes - Create a new context with "path" filter and "theme html" reaction, than hide the field by the css
Best but complicated(large usages) - create a new "view mode" and implement the display by new "hook_menu".
~ Almog

Filter a view by user-created tags in Drupal?

I'd like to add a block to the user profile that shows them content listings in their groups based on tags that they have in their profile.
(ie: someone puts a bike up for sale, the user has listed "bike" on their wishlist, it should show up to get their attention)
Since these tags vary user-to-user, I'm not sure exactly how to set up the filter.
Going a little farther, can I sort them by the number of matching tags?
I've found that taxonomy terms and views can be very tricky to get right. The main problems is that taxonomy terms has a one to many relationship with nodes, and views is built to be generic.
It might be quicker to create such a block in a custom module instead, because you may very well get stuck in views before getting what you want. Also you most likely have to create your own sort plugin for views, to get the sorting you want. I haven't seen any module creating something like that, and I don't think it's possible with views core. Creating plugin for views can be very harry, the first time you do it, so unless you know your way around views, I think you will have more luck just creating a block yourself. It's much simpler, than having to extend the views functionality.
Have you looked into Views? You can set up a block with views that retrieves (almost) ANY information from the database.
In your case, you can filter the information that you need and that belongs to the current user, also, sorting is doable via the Views administration.

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