Using Different Output Formats

The Model-View-Controller-Paradigm (MVC), as described in chapter 2, has many decisive advantages: It separates the model from the user interaction and it allows different output formats for the same data. We want to discuss the later.

Often different output formats are useful when generating content for CSV files, RSS feeds or print views. On the example of the blog we will show you, how you can extend your Extension with a print view.

Lets assume you have programed a HTML view for a list of blog posts. The Fluid template of this view is Resources/Private/Templates/Post/list.html . Now you want to add a print view, which is formatted differently. Create a new template Resources/Private/Templates/Post/list.print and write the appropriate Fluid markup to generate the print view. You can use the format attribute of the link ViewHelper to generate a link to the print view:

<f:link.action action="list" format="print">Print View</f:link.action>

The same list action is being called that was used for the HTML view. However, Fluid doesn’t choose the file list.html but list.print , because the format attribute of the link.action ViewHelper changed the format to print , our print view. You notice: The format is being reflected in the file ending of the template.

Tip

In the example above we have given the print view the name print . All format names are treated equally. There are no technical limitations for format names. Therefore you should choose a semantically, meaningful name.

Output other formats with Fluid

If you want to output JSON, RSS or similar data with Fluid, you have to write the appropriate TypoScript which passes the page rendering to Extbase and Fluid respectively. Otherwise, TYPO3 will always generate the <head> - and <body> -section.

You can use the following TypoScript: 

rss = PAGE
rss {
   typeNum = 100
   10 =< tt_content.list.20.*[ExtensionKey]*_*[PluginName]*

   config {
   disableAllHeaderCode = 1
   additionalHeaders = Content-type:application/xml
   xhtml_cleaning = 0
   admPanel = 0
   }
}

You still have to exchange [ExtensionKey] and [PluginName] with the name of the Extension and Plugin. We recommend to search for the path of your Plugin in the TypoScript Object Browser to avoid misspelling. Further on you have to explicitly set plugin.tx_*[ExtensionKey]*.persistence.storagePid to the number of the page containing the data to tell Extbase from which page the data should be read.