Introduction

What is TypoScript?

People are sometimes confused about what TypoScript is, where it can be used, and have a tendency to think of it as something complex. This chapter has been written to clarify these assumptions a bit.

Let's start with a basic truth: TypoScript is an efficient syntax for defining information in a hierarchical structure based on plain text.

This means TypoScript does not "do" anything - it just structures information. It's more similar to a markup language like HTML than to a full fledged programming language. Interpreting TypoScript is done in a certain context where single keywords get "meaning" by triggering some processing. For instance, the frontend rendering chain "understands" page = PAGE and sets up certain frontend output related scaffolding due to this.

In more academic terms, TypoScript is not Turing-complete: While there is a concept of "if" (see "conditions"), it is not possible to define dynamic variables ("constants" in TypoScript can't change their value at runtime), and it's also not possible to have programming loops as such. Interpreting TypoScript is done by PHP which may trigger programming loops based on TypoScript configuration, but the syntax does not contain such a construct itself.

TypoScript does not contain data, but configuration: Data is typically stored in the database, edited by backend editors, and (frontend) TypoScript is only used to configure which specific data is retrieved from the database and how it should be processed to prepare output. In the backend, TypoScript (which we call TSconfig in this scope) is used to toggle PHP backend controller functionality, for instance, to enable or disable UI elements, to change defaults, and similar.

TypoScript parsing

Both the frontend and the backend deal with TypoScript syntax. The parser, which translates TypoScript text snippets into some structure (an object tree or a PHP array), that can be interpreted by the frontend or the backend, is thus a core concept and located in the core extension. Integrators and developers don't have to directly deal with the parser in most cases, the system provides higher level API doing all the dirty groundwork.

Developers and integrators with knowledge of PHP can think of the parsed TypoScript as a multidimensional PHP array. In comparison to arrays in PHP, TypoScript syntax allows a more relaxed handling of syntax errors, definition of values with less needed language symbols and an efficient way to copy and unset bigger sub arrays.