Common template tasks #

The book closes its template chapter with recipes. Here they are with today's syntax: foreach instead of section, no inline style=, and the operators that exist now. All of them go in a design's templates; see template principles for where.

Navigation menus #

A top-level menu (the folders just below the root, the current one marked). treemenu takes the path of the current page ($module_result.path), a node ID (no longer used: pass false()), the class filter, how many levels to skip and how many to show (menu and tree operators):

{def $top=treemenu( $module_result.path, false(), array( 'folder' ), 1, 1 )}
<ul class="topmenu">
{foreach $top as $item}
    <li{if $item.is_selected} class="selected"{/if}>
        <a href={$item.url_alias|ezurl}>{$item.text|wash}</a>
    </li>
{/foreach}
</ul>

Breadcrumb: loop over the path. Wrap it in a cache block keyed with the node:

{cache-block keys=array( 'path', $module_result.node_id )}
<p class="path">
{foreach $module_result.path as $p offset 1}
    {if $p.url}<a href={$p.url_alias|ezurl}>{$p.text|shorten( 60 )|wash}</a>
    {else}{$p.text|shorten( 60 )|wash}{/if}
{delimiter} / {/delimiter}
{/foreach}
</p>
{/cache-block}

(Check $p.url_alias: the path entries hold a url_alias; the last one, the page itself, has no url.)

A tree menu: treemenu with more levels returns a flat list in menu order; each item has level and indent. Do the indentation with a CSS class made from the level (level-1, level-2 ...) in the design's style sheet, never with style=:

{foreach treemenu( $module_result.path, false(), false(), 1, 5 ) as $item}
    <li class="level-{$item.level}{if $item.is_selected} selected{/if}">
        <a href={$item.url_alias|ezurl}>{$item.text|wash}</a>
    </li>
{/foreach}

Edit functions in the site #

Let the right users edit from the public page. Ask the object whether the current user may:

{if $node.object.can_edit}
    <a href={concat( 'content/edit/', $node.contentobject_id )|ezurl}>Edit</a>
{/if}

Removing and commenting are buttons in a form that posts to content/action (ActionRemove, NewButton) with a form token. Copy the markup from a shipped template, such as design/standard/templates/node/view/full.tpl, rather than typing it from memory. View modes shows where such a template sits.

Dates and times #

currentdate() is the time now as a timestamp; do arithmetic with sum, format with datetime:

{currentdate()|sum( 86400 )|datetime( 'custom', '%j %F %Y' )}

for tomorrow's date. The formats and the named classes (shortdate, time, ...) are in locale operators.

Text #

• {$text|shorten( 120 )} limits a plain string; always add |wash when you print user text.
• Rich text is limited by its own output; the old advice to cut the XML ahead is replaced by using a separate short text attribute (an intro) in the class.
• {$text|autolink} turns addresses in plain text into links.

A custom user experience #

• A dummy node (the class of the planning chapter, with only a name) can act as the hook for a special page such as My site, with an override of its own (overriding templates).
• A user panel: show the current user's groups and roles with fetch( 'user', 'current_user' ) and the role operators (role operators); the user preferences function is in What is on my account page.

Other tasks #

• An audit trail: loop over fetch( 'content', 'version_list', ... ), showing the creator and the date of each version.
• Creator, modifier, publishing date: $node.object.owner.name, $node.object.published|datetime(...).
• Keywords and automatically related objects: an ezkeyword attribute holds the keywords ($node.data_map.keywords.content.keywords); the objects that share a keyword are fetched by the keyword function of the content module (see Fetch functions). The "advanced keyword facility" of the book (listing by keyword) is a fetch with alphabet or classid parameters, as described there.
• A threaded forum: a forum is a folder of topics, each topic a tree of replies; the template walks the children recursively with a template that includes itself.

Back to the chapters.

Source and license #

Adapted from chapter 3, "Displaying Content with eZ publish Templates", of Learning eZ publish: Building Content Management Solutions by Paul Borgermans, Tony Wood, Paul Forsyth, Martin Bauer, Björn Dieding and Ben Pirt (additional material by Bruce Morrison), second edition, 2024, Book-Learning-eZPublish. Copyright (c) 2004-2024 7x and Graham Brookins. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 or any later version, with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts (the license). Changes: rearranged and shortened; syntax, operators, settings and examples updated to Exponential 6 (foreach, current settings, no inline style or script).