Extending the Admin Panel

Extension authors can write their own modules or add submodules to existing modules.

Creating additional modules

An admin panel module commonly has:

  • An icon, an identifier, a short info and a label

  • initializeModule and onSubmit methods for initialization (done early in the TYPO3 Request) and for reacting to changes (onSubmit is executed when the settings are updated)

  • Settings that influence page rendering or page display

  • Methods to provide custom CSS and JavaScript files

  • Submodules

To create your own Admin Panel module

  1. Create a new PHP class extending \TYPO3\CMS\Adminpanel\Modules\AbstractModule.

  2. Implement at least the following methods:

    • getIdentifier - A unique identifier for your module. For example mynamespace_modulename

    • getIconIdentifier - An icon identifier which is resolved via the icon API. Make sure to use a registered icon here.

    • getLabel - Speaking label for the module. You can access language files via $this->getLanguageService()

    • getShortInfo - Displayed next to the module label, may contain aggregated infos (such as Total Parse Time: 200ms)

  3. Register your module by adding the following in your ext_localconf.php

    $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['EXTCONF']['adminpanel']['modules']['mynamespace_modulename'] = [
    'module' => [
        \Your\Namespace\Adminpanel\Modules\YourModule::class,
        'before' => ['cache'],
    ]
];

Using before or after you can influence where your module will be displayed in the module menu by referencing the identifier / array key of other modules.

Modules themselves do provide settings for the page rendering and global actions (like preview settings, clearing caches or adding action buttons for editing the page) but do not provide further content.

If you want to display additional content in the Admin Panel (like rendering times or backtraces), you have to add a submodule to your main module.

To provide settings in a module, implement the method getSettings, which has to return rendered HTML form elements (but without the form tag), ready to be used in the Admin Panel main form.

Adding a sub-module

An Admin Panel submodule has:

  • An identifier and a label.

  • initializeModule and onSubmit methods for initialization (done early in the TYPO3 Request) and reacting to changes (onSubmit is executed when the settings are updated).

  • Module content (for example the Info submodules display information about the current page or server configuration).

  • Settings influencing their module content (for example the TypoScript Time / Rendering sub module has settings that influence whether to display messages or not).

As soon as a module has a submodule it will be displayed in the main Admin Panel. Modules without submodules may only provide settings, and are only displayed in the Settings overview.

Adding a submodule is similar to adding a module.

  1. First, create a new class that extends AbstractSubModule. Implement at least the following methods:

    • getIdentifier - A unique identifier for your sub module (for example submodulename)

    • getLabel - Speaking label for the module - you can access language files via $this->getLanguageService()

    • getContent - The rendered HTML content for your module

  2. Register your sub module by adding the following in your ext_localconf.php

    $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['EXTCONF']['adminpanel']['modules']['mynamespace_modulename']['submodules']['submodulename'] = [
    'module' => \Your\Namespace\Adminpanel\Modules\YourModule\Submodule::class
];

Where mynamespace_modulename references the main module where you want to add your submodule, and submodulename is the identifier of your sub module. This way, you can also register new custom sub modules to existing main modules.

Examples

You can find examples for main and sub modules and their registration in the Admin Panel extension. Short ones for a quick look are:

  • adminpanel/Classes/Modules/Info/PhpInformation.php (Submodule)

  • adminpanel/Classes/Modules/InfoModule.php (Main module, serves as submodule wrapper only)

  • adminpanel/Classes/Modules/EditModule.php (Main module, custom rendering settings)