Feature: #103894 - Additional properties for columns in Page Layouts

Description

Backend Layouts were introduced in TYPO3 v6 in order to customize the view of the Page module in TYPO3 backend for pages, but has since grown, also in frontend rendering, to select e.g. Fluid template files via TypoScript for a page, commonly used via data:pagelayout.

In order to use a single source for backend and frontend representation, the definition of a "Backend Layout" or "Page Layout" is expanded to also include more information for a specific content area. The Content Area was previously defined via "name" (for the label in the Page module) and "colPos", the numeric database field in which content is grouped in.

A definition can now optionally also contain a "slideMode" property and an "identifier" property next to each colPos, in order to simplify frontend rendering.

Whereas "identifier" is a speaking representation for the colPos, such as "main", "sidebar" or "footerArea", the "slideMode" can be set to one of the three options:

• slideMode = slide - if no content is found, check the parent pages for more content
• slideMode = collect - use all content from this page, and the parent pages as one collection
• slideMode = collectReverse- same as "collect" but in the opposite order

With this information added, a new DataProcessor page-content ( \TYPO3\CMS\Frontend\DataProcessing\PageContentFetchingProcessor ) is introduced for the frontend rendering, which fetches all content for a page and respecting the settings from the page layout.

The new data processor allows to manipulate the fetched page content via the PSR-14 AfterContentHasBeenFetchedEvent.

Impact

Enriching the backend layout information for each colPos enables a TYPO3 integrator to write less TypoScript in order to render content on a page.

The DataProcessor fetches all content elements from all defined columns with an included "identifier" in the selected backend layout and makes the resolved record objects available in the Fluid template via {content."myIdentifier".records}.

Example of an enriched backend layout definition:

mod.web_layout.BackendLayouts {
  default {
    title = Default
    config {
      backend_layout {
        colCount = 1
        rowCount = 1
        rows {
          1 {
            columns {
              1 {
                name = Main Content Area
                colPos = 0
                identifier = main
                slideMode = slide
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Example of the frontend output:

page = PAGE
page.10 = PAGEVIEW
page.10.paths.10 = EXT:my_site_package/Tests/Resources/Private/Templates/
page.10.dataProcessing.10 = page-content
page.10.dataProcessing.10.as = myContent

<main>
    <f:for each="{myContent.main.records}" as="record">
        <f:cObject typoscriptObjectPath="{record.mainType}" table="{record.mainType}" data="{record}"/>
    </f:for>
</main>

The f:cObject ViewHelper above uses the rendering definition of the tt_content table {record.mainType} to render the Content Element from the list. The attribute data expects the raw database record, which is retrieved from {record}.