Attention

TYPO3 v9 has reached its end-of-life September 30th, 2021 and is not maintained by the community anymore. Looking for a stable version? Use the version switch on the top left.

You can order Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) here: TYPO3 ELTS.

USER and USER_INT

This calls either a PHP function or a method in a class. This is very useful if you want to incorporate your own data processing or content.

Basically USER and USER_INT are user defined cObjects, because they just call a function or method, which you control!

If you call a method in a class (which is of course instantiated as an object), the internal variable $cObj of that class is set with a reference to the parent cObject. This offers you an API of functions, which might be more or less relevant for you. See ContentObjectRenderer.php in the TYPO3 source code; access to typolink or stdWrap are only two of the gimmicks you get.

If you create this object as USER_INT, it will be rendered non-cached, outside the main page-rendering.

userFunc

Property

userFunc

Data type

function name

Description

The name of the function, which should be called. If you specify the name with a '->' in it, then it is interpreted as a call to a method in a class.

Two parameters are sent to the PHP function: First a content variable (which is empty for USER/USER_INT objects, but not when the user function is called from stdWrap functions .postUserFunc or .preUserFunc). The second parameter is an array with the properties of this cObject, if any.

(properties you define)

Property

(properties you define)

Data type

(the data type you want)

Description

Apart from the properties "userFunc" and "stdWrap", which are defined for all USER/USER_INT objects by default, you can add additional properties with any name and any data type to your USER/USER_INT object. These properties and their values will then be available in PHP; they will be passed to your function (in the second parameter). This allows you to process them further in any way you wish.

stdWrap

Property

stdWrap

Data type

Everything that's made available by stdWrap.

Examples:

Attention

The property includeLibs has been removed in TYPO3 8.0. In earlier versions the userFunc classes were sometimes stored in fileadmin/ - this is no longer possible out of the box and not recommended.

For the best result you should always, without exception, place your class files in an extension, define composer class loading for this extension and add this extension as a dependency of your project. Then, your classes will load without issues when you refer to them by their class name.

Example 1

This example shows how to include your own PHP script and how to use it from TypoScript. Use this TypoScript configuration:

page = PAGE
page.10 = USER_INT
page.10 {
  userFunc = Vendor\ExtensionName\ExampleTime->printTime
}

The file typo3conf/ext/extension_name/Classes/ExampleTime.php might amongst other things contain:

namespace Vendor\ExtensionName;
class ExampleTime {
  /**
   * Output the current time in red letters
   *
   * @param  string          Empty string (no content to process)
   * @param  array           TypoScript configuration
   * @return string          HTML output, showing the current server time.
   */
  public function printTime(string $content, array $conf): string
  {
    return '<p style="color: red;">Dynamic time: ' . date('H:i:s') . '</p><br />';
  }
}

Here page.10 will give back what the PHP function printTime() returned. Since we did not use a USER object, but a USER_INT object, this function is executed on every page hit. So this example each time outputs the current time in red letters.

Example 2

Now let us have a look at another example:

We want to display all content element headers of a page in reversed order. To do that we use the following TypoScript:

page = PAGE
page.typeNum = 0

page.30 = USER
page.30 {
   userFunc = Vendor\ExtensionName\ExampleListRecords->listContentRecordsOnPage
   # reverseOrder is a boolean variable (see PHP code below)
   reverseOrder = 1
}

The file typo3conf/ext/extension_name/Classes/ExampleListRecords.php might amongst other things contain:

namespace Vendor\ExtensionName;

use TYPO3\CMS\Core\Database\ConnectionPool;
use TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility;
use TYPO3\CMS\Frontend\ContentObject\ContentObjectRenderer;

/**
 * Example of a method in a PHP class to be called from TypoScript
 *
 */
class ExampleListRecords {
  /**
   * Reference to the parent (calling) cObject set from TypoScript
   *
   * @var ContentObjectRenderer
   */
  public $cObj;

  /**
    * List the headers of the content elements on the page
    *
    *
    * @param string          Empty string (no content to process)
    * @param array           TypoScript configuration
    * @return        string          HTML output, showing content elements (in reverse order, if configured)
    */
  public function listContentRecordsOnPage(string $content, array $conf): string
  {
      $connection = GeneralUtility::makeInstance(ConnectionPool::class)->getConnectionForTable('tt_content');
      $result = $connection->select(
          ['header'],
          'tt_content',
          ['pid' => (int)$GLOBALS['TSFE']->id],
          [],
          ['sorting' => $conf['reverseOrder'] ? 'DESC' : 'ASC']
      );
      $output = [];
      foreach ($result as $row) {
          $output[] = $row['header'];
      }
      return implode($output, '<br />');
  }
}

page.30 will give back what the function listContentRecordsOnPage() of the class YourClass returned. This example returns some debug output at the beginning and then the headers of the content elements on the page in reversed order. Note how we defined the property "reverseOrder" for this USER object and how we used it in the PHP code.

Example 3

Another example can be found in the documentation of the stdWrap property postUserFunc There you can also see how to work with $cObj, the reference to the parent (calling) cObject.

Example 4

PHP has a function gethostname() to "get the standard host name for the local machine". You can make it available like this:

page.20 = USER_INT
page.20 {
   userFunc = Vendor\ExtensionName\Hostname->getHostname
}

Contents of typo3conf/ext/extension_name/Classes/Hostname.php:

namespace Vendor\ExtensionName;

   class Hostname {
      /**
       * Return standard host name for the local machine
       *
       * @param  string          Empty string (no content to process)
       * @param  array           TypoScript configuration
       * @return string          HTML result
       */
      public function getHostname(string $content, array $conf): string
      {
         return gethostname() ?: '';
      }
   }