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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!