What is the best way to create regions in your layout similar to Wordpress's Widgets or Drupal Blocks? What is the best practice method of doing that in CakePHP?
If by regions you mean a special "content container" (never used WP/Drupal), then it's very easy.
There are several ways to accomplish this, but the one that came to my mind first was this:
Create a helper (or an entire plugin) to handle the "which content goes into which container" logic. Shouldn't be too hard to do because you have many Cake utility classes to help you out with that (such as the Configure class). This should obviously be configurable by the end user.
Create containers in your layout, example:
<div class="content-container" id="content-container-left">
<?php echo $yourHelper->outputContent("left"); ?>
</div>
Two options:
Content should be based on elements; or
Content should be based on custom plugins (which actually do their stuff and output the content)
Note: There are probably better ways to accomplish what you want, this is just the first that came to my mind. I'd recommend some pencil-and-paper planning before you actually code anything, it will improve your chances of finding the best way for your app.
I created a Sidebar Helper recently that you might find useful.
You define the content of the boxes in Cake elements, and then add them by calling ...
$sidebar->addBox(array('element'=>'my_sidebox_element');
... this would render the content of views/elements/my_sidebox_element
Alternatively you can specify te content of a box 'inline':
$sidebar->startBox(array('title' => 'My Inline Box'));
<p>blah <b>blah</b> <span>blah</span></p>
$sidebar->endBox();
The in your layout file call
echo $sidebar->getSidebar();
... and each of your boxes will be rendered as divs
Technically speaking this doesn't need to be used as a 'SideBar' - it ultimately depends on how you render the layout with CSS.
See the documented code for more details:
SidebarHelper on GitHub
Related
In Drupal one can basically style the elements, like the search box, or the basic page etc. and then put some content in the site and the resulting page will be generated. But what if you want one specific site (e.g. the index page) to be different? E.g. have a image as a background, a different navigation styling etc.
What's the best paractice way of doing this?
Best practice is to have a different theme which you can switch to by using hook_custom_theme() where you check the current path. Also make sure that your theme to switch to is enabled:
/**
* Implements hook_custom_theme().
*/
function YOUR_MODULE_custom_theme() {
# check path with arg(0)
# return theme name to switch to
return 'different_theme_machine_name';
}
Alternatively you can also try ThemeKey doing this out of the box with an interface & allowing you the specify rules.
If you need to change only the content(body) section of your page, use Disply Suite. You can create unique look and feel layouts for your body section of each page.
If you trying to change the complete layout of one page (eg: Services), Create new Content Type 'Services'. Then create a template file for this content type, You must name this template call page--services.tpl.php. And also you can overwrite the index page layout by creating page--front.tpl.php template. Done!
What you are saying you want to change is all styling. And you know you can do a page to look drastically different with CSS... and you can do it that way depending on your chosen Drupal theme.
Now, with the Chrome Inspector (or FF inspector) look at the body tag, it probably has many classes which indicates in what page you are, what type of node (if it's a node) or if it's an admin section, or an anonymous user.
Using those specific classes you can style a frontpage, or a view, or a node, or anything, without installing more modules... with some limitations because you can't change rendered HTML this way.
Finally, don't get scared by using modules in Drupal, it's how Drupal works and it works pretty well. The thing is to install the best tools to increase your productivity, and Drupal have excellent options to change your theming and content like Display Suite (like #BaikHo suggested).
Hope that helps.
PD: Using the less module and with custom your theme you can have LESS css which is considerably faster than using only CSS, and because it's integrated with Drupal you can theme make everything even faster. Give it a try.
The standard ("ships with Drupal") user page appears to be compacted into the $user_profile() array. Then, it's unpacked and "printed" (to the screen) by the somewhat terse user-profile.tpl.php template:
<div class="profile"<?php print $attributes; ?>>
<?php print render($user_profile); ?>
</div>
Is there a guide somewhere that would help me understand what the typical internal structure of this array is, and what hooks I might need to employ in order to place DIVs, classes and so forth into it, in order to achieve certain basic design goals?
Take a look at https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/88407/how-to-create-a-profile-page. I strongly suggest to use the Panels module. It allows you to add blocks, views etc. to your pages and makes theming a lot easier. There are tons of information about Panels on the internet, so I suggest you have a look around first. The following links can be a good start:
https://www.drupal.org/node/496278
https://drupalize.me/search?query=panels
I am currently trying to jazz up a SilverStripe site by making the content more engaging. The site is responsive, but all this means currently is that the navigation bar/header snaps to a more mobile friendly style when it hits the mobile break point.
The long and short of it is, my main page.ss is this:
<html>
<head>
<title>$Title</title>
</head>
<body>
$Header
$Layout
$Footer
</body>
</html>
With $Layout rendering a few variations of a basic page. We have a couple of layouts that aim to give our webmaster pages that are a bit more engaging - for example we have an accordion type page that has many accordion section DataObjects, that present the page as an accordion page with the open/shut javascript functionality.
But this is not enough. I want to give the webmaster more flexibility in the CMS to create interesting pages, without me having to create hundreds of different page types.
I'm thinking of creating a module that gets rid of the main $Content field for all pages, and instead inserts a sort of grid system management field. The webmaster can add rows (one DataObject) and then split those rows into sections (another DataObject). The sections will have a content field managed by TinyMCE, just like a page has. Then on the front end I will map these rows and sections to a responsive grid system.
For variations on the sections, I will add classes (a bit like having different page types) that render slightly differently. The sections will have .ss and .css (and possibly .js) to control their own look and feel.
My question is, how have other people approached this problem? Does my idea sound like overkill? Or does it sound like a good idea for a module?
-
For some examples of what I am trying to achieve, this page is a good example:
http://www.wingsforlife.com/en/research/
Content is split up into various sections, which allows for better control when the page is resized. Also throughout the site, content is varied, sometimes it will be in a single column, other times two, which snaps to one column when the window is smaller.
On the home page, if you scroll down, there are 4 links that are presented inside circles, that contain a number and some text: http://www.wingsforlife.com/en/
This is something I can't see being possible inside TinyMCE (which is fair enough as TinyMCE is just a basic content editor, not a web design tool).
Have a look at https://github.com/burnbright/silverstripe-widgetpages for an implementation of using Widgets to compose a webpage. Also https://github.com/g4b0/silverstripe-widget-pages-extension.
this can easily be achieved by replacing the HTMLEditorField that's linked to the Content field in the database by some GridField, managing DataObjects that make up what you might call 'ContentParts'. we've already used this approach in some projects to allow for more rendering flexibility of content elements.
simply tie some DataObjects to your Page class:
private static $has_many = array(
'ContentParts' => 'ContentPart'
);
then, use a GridField to manage them in your getCMSFields:
$gridFieldConfig = GridFieldConfig_RecordEditor::create();
$field_ContentParts = new GridField('ContentParts', 'Content Parts', $this->ContentParts(), $gridFieldConfig);
simplest way to render them in your template is as follows:
<% loop ContentParts %>
<section>...</section>
<% end_loop %>
of course you'll want to have different contentparts, so you might want to create subclasses of ContentPart with their custom fields and use the GridFieldAddNewMultiClass component to add them to your GridField (it's part of the GridFieldExtensions module, to be found here: https://github.com/ajshort/silverstripe-gridfieldextensions)
hth
I have a requirement to perform an indexed search across content which must include a couple of tags in the result. The tags must be a random selection. The platform is Drupal 7.12
I have created a view that manages the results of a SOLR search through the search_api. The view returns the required content and seems to work as intended. I have included a couple of Global: custom text fields as placeholders for the tag entries.
I am now looking for a solution to manage the requirement to randomise the tag values. The randomisation is not the issue, the issue is how to include the random values into the view result.
My current approach is to write a views_pre_render hook to intercept the placeholders which appear as fields ([nothing] and [nothing_1]). The test code looks like the following
function MODULE_views_pre_render( &$view )
{
$view_display = $view->display['default'];
$display_option = $view_display->display_options;
$fields = $display_option['fields'];
foreach( $view->result as $result )
{
$fields['nothing']['alter']['text'] = sprintf("test %d", rand(1,9));
}
}
I am currently not seeing any change in the placeholder when the view is rendered.
Any pointers to approach, alternate solutions etc would be gratefully received as this is consuming a lot of scarce time at the moment. Calling print_r( $view ) from within the hook dumps over 46M into a log file for a result set of 2 items.
There are two possible solutions for your task.
First approach is do everything on the template level. Define a template for the view field you want to randomize. In advanced settings of your display go to Theme: Information. Make sure that the proper theme is selected and find the template suggestions for your field. They are listed starting from most general to the most specific and you can choose whatever suits you better.
I guess the most specific template suggestion for your field would be something like this: views-view-field--[YOR VIEW NAME]--[YOUR DISPLAY NAME]--nothing.tpl.php. Create the file with that name in the theme templates directory and in this template you can render what ever you want.
By default this template has only one line:
print $output;
you can change this to:
print sprintf("test %d", rand(1,9));
or to anything else, whatsoever :)
Second approach is to go with Views PHP module. WIth this module you can add a custom PHP field in which you can do whatever you want. Even though the module hasn't been released it seems to work quite well for the most of the tasks and most certainly for such a simple task as randomizing numbers it will work out for sure.
I stumbled upon this while searching for another issue and thought I would contribute.
Instead of adding another module or modifying a template, just add a views "sort criteria" of "Global: Random".
I just finished the "15 min Blog Post tutorial" included in the documentation for cakephp. I was asked for another tutorial to change the layout for first tutorial.
However, I am fairly new to MVC programming/Cakephp and I have no real clue how to do so. Well, I know I need "default.ctp" placed in app/views/layouts/ and I presume I need to include
to include my data? . . .
I am really at a loss of what to do. I set up my default.ctp as I mentioned above, but when I go to localhost:9999/posts the layout is still the same. I guess I need to include a stylesheet (and if so, where?)
I guess if someone can point me in the right direction to a beginner's guide to layout styling or how to use it I would greatly appreciate any help.
I would advice you to read the following from the cookbook: Layouts and CSS. Then copy the layout from /cake/libs/view/layouts/ to /app/views/layouts/ and modify it to your needs. After that create you stylesheet (or modify existing one) in /app/webroot/css/ and include it in your layout.
Create in app/View/Layout a file named "my_posts_layout.ctp"
In your PostController set $this->layout = 'my_posts_layout';
This way you should view the content defined on my_posts_layout.ctp.
Lack of stylesheets has no impact here.
How MVC works in CakePHP:
The router dispatches an incoming request to an appropriate Contoller.
The appropriate Controller function executes (no output, just fetching data, setting up variables).
The appropriate view is rendered. In fact, the output of the view is just contained in $content_for_layout.
What you really get back in the browser is in the layout. Therefore you can put your view's output into the layout by echo $content_for_layout in default.ctp. (Of course you can also have different layouts.) In addition, the layout can be enhanced with elements.
I really recomend the CakePHP CookBook, easily found from the CakePHP homepage. Modifying default.ctp should edit your applications layout.
A more specific question (eg. code samples of your default.ctp, expected results etc) might help people provide a better answer than mine.