Array and object inspection

By using the "attribute" template operator, it is possible to quickly inspect the contents of arrays and template objects. The operator creates an overview of available keys, attribute names and/or methods in an object or an array. By default, only the array keys and object attribute names (also called identifiers) are shown. By passing "show" as the first parameter, the operator will also display the values.

The second parameter can be used to control the number of levels/children that will be explored (the default setting is 2). The following example demonstrates how the operator can be used to inspect the contents of an "ezcontentobjecttreenode" object.

{$node|attribute( show, 1 )}

The following output will be produced:

As the output shows, there is a lot of information that can be extracted from a node object. In addition to strings and numbers the object also consists of other objects. For example, the creator of the node is a "ezcontentobject" object. The creator object can be further inspected by doing the following:

{$node.creator|attribute( show, 1 )}

The following output will be produced:

Again, this object consists of a lot of information. As mentioned above, the "attribute" operator can be used on both objects and arrays. The following example demonstrates how to inspect the "data_map" array (which reveals the object's attributes) of the node's creator object.

{$node.creator.data_map|attribute( show, 1 )}

The following output will be produced: