Getting the value of the Plugin FlexForm field¶
In the mininews plugin class we first need to detect if a Template Object record is pointed at and if so make sure it is used.
Detecting the Template Object (TO) record¶
In the “mininews/pi1/class.tx_mininews_pi1.php” file the class contains these two variables:
// TemplaVoilà! Plus specific:
var $TA=''; // If TemplaVoilà! Plus is used and a TO record is found, this array will be loaded with Template Array.
var $TMPLobj=''; // Template Object
Later, in the listView function you find this initialization which detects the record. Comments below
1: function listView($content,$conf) {
2:
3: // Init FlexForm configuration for plugin:
4: $this->pi_initPIflexForm();
5:
6: // Looking for TemplaVoilà! Plus TO record and if found, initialize template object:
7: if (t3lib_extMgm::isLoaded('templavoilaplus')) {
8: $field_templateObject = $this->pi_getFFvalue($this->cObj->data['pi_flexform'],'field_templateObject');
9: if ((int)$field_templateObject) {
10: $this->TMPLobj = t3lib_div::makeInstance(\Ppi\TemplaVoilaPlus\Domain\Model\HtmlMarkup::class);
11: $this->TA = $this->TMPLobj->getTemplateArrayForTO((int)$field_templateObject);
12: if (is_array($this->TA)) {
13: $this->TMPLobj->setHeaderBodyParts($this->TMPLobj->tDat['MappingInfo_head'],$this->TMPLobj->tDat['MappingData_head_cached']);
14: }
15: }
16: }
- Line 4 initializes the “pi_flexform” field in $this->cObj->data. This will convert the field from being a string with the XML data to being an array with the same XML converted to PHP array by t3lib_div::xml2array()
- Line 7 checks if TemplaVoilà! Plus is loaded -which it must be of course!
- Line 8 requests the value of “field_templateObject” in the FlexForm content of “pi_flexform”
- Line 9 sees in that value is an integer - which means it points to a Template Object record “uid”
- In line 10 we create an instance of the “PpiTemplaVoilaPlusDomainModelHtmlMarkup::class” class which will be our API for merging our data from mininews with the template from the Template Object record.
- Line 11 loads the Template Array from the TO pointed to by $field_templateObject.
- Line 12 checks if the Template Array was set - this is the case if there was mapping information found in the TO.
- Line 13 will set possible header sections if any should be defined in the TO.
Now, in the rest of the mininews class we can just check if $this->TA is an array and if so use TemplaVoilà! Plus API for merging data and template. This is shown next.
Merging Data with Template markup¶
In order to not make this too lengthy I will just cut out some examples.
Repeated list rows
The first example is how to accumulate content for list rows. This is basically done by a loop, traversing over the elements and for each iteration calling an API function in TemplaVoilà Plus with two arguments, the appropriate part of the ->TA variable (Template Array = cached template markup) and an array with the mininews data.
1: // Create list of elements:
2: $elements='';
3: while($this->internal['currentRow'] = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)) {
4: $elements.=$this->TMPLobj->mergeDataArrayToTemplateArray(
5: $this->TA['sub']['sArchive']['sub']['field_archiveListing']['sub']['element_even'],
6: array(
7: 'field_date' => $this->getFieldContent('datetime'),
8: 'field_header' => $this->pi_list_linkSingle($this->getFieldContent('title'),$this->internal['currentRow']['uid'],1),
9: 'field_teaser' => nl2br(trim(t3lib_div::fixed_lgd($this->getFieldContent('teaser_list'),$this->conf['frontPage.']['teaserLgd'])))
10: )
11: );
12: }
In this listing you can see that the array with data from mininews has three keys, “field_date”, “field_header” and “field_teaser”. These corresponds with three elements found in the Data Structure XML for the “ARCHIVE LISTING” template:
10: <field_archiveListing>
11: <type>array</type>
12: <section>1</section>
13: <tx_templavoilaplus>
14: <title>Archive Listing container</title>
15: <description></description>
16: <tags>div,table:inner</tags>
17: </tx_templavoilaplus>
18: <el>
19: <element_even>
20: <type>array</type>
21: <tx_templavoilaplus>
22: <title>Element Container, Even</title>
23: <description></description>
24: <tags>*:outer</tags>
25: </tx_templavoilaplus>
26: <el>
27: <field_date>
28: <tx_templavoilaplus>
29: <title>Date</title>
30: <description>News date</description>
31: <tags>*:inner</tags>
32: <sample_data>
33: <n0>6th August 10:34</n0>
34: <n1>29/12 2003</n1>
35: </sample_data>
36: </tx_templavoilaplus>
37: </field_date>
38: <field_header>
39: <tx_templavoilaplus>
40: <title>Header</title>
41: <description>Header field.</description>
42: <tags>*:inner</tags>
43: <sample_data>
44: <n0>People on mars!</n0>
45: <n1>Snow in Sydney</n1>
46: </sample_data>
47: </tx_templavoilaplus>
48: </field_header>
49: <field_teaser>
50: <tx_templavoilaplus>
51: <title>Teaser</title>
52: <description>Teaser field.</description>
53: <tags>*:inner</tags>
54: <sample_data>
55: <n0>Capthurim Chanaan vero genuit Sidonem primogenitum et Heth Iebuseum quoque </n0>
56: </sample_data>
57: </tx_templavoilaplus>
58: </field_teaser>
This is a part of the Data Structure which is nested inside of
<T3DataStructure><sheets><sArchive><ROOT><el>
I point this out because you can see the logic of the variable
$this->TA['sub']['sArchive']['sub']['field_archiveListing']['sub']['element_even']
in the code listing from this. Basically, if you substitute “sub” with “el” you can almost read that this variable will contain the markup for
<T3DataStructure><sheets><sArchive><ROOT><el><field_archiveListing><el><element_even>
$this->TA['sub']['sArchive']['sub']['field_archiveListing']['sub']['element_even']
Putting it all together
After having accumulated the list rows (and some other stuff) the values on the outer levels are also composed into a similar API call whose output is finally returned:
1: // Wrap the elements in their containers:
2: $out = $this->TMPLobj->mergeDataArrayToTemplateArray(
3: $this->TA['sub']['sArchive'],
4: array(
5: 'field_archiveListing' => $elements,
6: 'field_browseBox_cellsContainer' => $br_elements,
7: 'field_searchBox_sword' => htmlspecialchars($this->piVars['sword']),
8: 'field_searchBox_submitUrl' => htmlspecialchars(t3lib_div::getIndpEnv('REQUEST_URI')),
9: 'field_browseBox_displayRange' => $rangeLabel,
10: 'field_browseBox_displayCount' => $this->internal['res_count']
11: )
12: );
13:
14: return $out;
This time you will see that the accumulated content of the list rows ($elements) is added to the key “field_archiveListing”. For all the other fields you can look them up in the DS as well:
...
105:
106: <!--
107: Defining mappings for the search box:
108: -->
109: <field_searchBox_submitUrl>
110: <type>attr</type>
111: <tx_templavoilaplus>
112: <title>Search form action</title>
113: <description>URL of the news-search; Map to the action-attribute of the search form.</description>
114: <tags>form:attr:action</tags>
115: <sample_data>
116: <n0>javascript:alert('Hello, you pressed the search button!');return false;</n0>
117: </sample_data>
118: </tx_templavoilaplus>
119: </field_searchBox_submitUrl>
120: <field_searchBox_sword>
121: <type>attr</type>
122: <tx_templavoilaplus>
123: <title>Search word field</title>
124: <description>Search word; Map to the forms input-fields value-attribute.</description>
125: <tags>input:attr:value</tags>
126: <sample_data>
127: <n0>Strawberry Jam</n0>
128: <n1>Jack Daniels</n1>
129: <n2>Flowers</n2>
130: </sample_data>
131: </tx_templavoilaplus>
132: </field_searchBox_sword>
133:
134: <!--
135: Defining mappings for the browse box, display note:
136: -->
137: <field_browseBox_displayRange>
138: <tx_templavoilaplus>
139: <title>Range</title>
140: <description>Map to position where "x-y" should be outputted (showing which records are displayed)</description>
141: <tags>*:inner</tags>
142: <sample_data>
143: <n0>1-10</n0>
144: <n1>20 to 30</n1>
145: </sample_data>
146: </tx_templavoilaplus>
147: </field_browseBox_displayRange>
148: <field_browseBox_displayCount>
149: <tx_templavoilaplus>
150: <title>Count</title>
151: <description>Map to position where the total number of found records should be outputted.</description>
152: <tags>*:inner</tags>
153: <sample_data>
154: <n0>123</n0>
155: <n1>3402</n1>
156: </sample_data>
157: </tx_templavoilaplus>
158: </field_browseBox_displayCount>
...
Thats all!