Templating

Templating is done in Fluid, which is a next-generation templating engine. It has several goals in mind:

  • Simplicity

  • Flexibility

  • Extensibility

  • Ease of use

This templating engine should not be bloated, instead, we try to do it “The Zen Way” - you do not need to learn too many things, thus you can concentrate on getting your things done, while the template engine handles everything you do not want to care about.

What Does it Do?

In many MVC systems, the view currently does not have a lot of functionality. The standard view usually provides a render method, and nothing more. That makes it cumbersome to write powerful views, as most designers will not write PHP code.

That is where the Template Engine comes into play: It “lives” inside the View, and is controlled by a special TemplateView which instantiates the Template Parser, resolves the template HTML file, and renders the template afterwards.

Below, you’ll find a snippet of a real-world template displaying a list of blog postings. Use it to check whether you find the template language intuitive:

{namespace f=Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers}
<html>
<head><title>Blog</title></head>
<body>
<h1>Blog Postings</h1>
<f:for each="{postings}" as="posting">
  <h2>{posting.title}</h2>
  <div class="author">{posting.author.name} {posting.author.email}</div>
  <p>
    <f:link.action action="details" arguments="{id : posting.id}">
      {posting.teaser}
    </f:link.action>
  </p>
</f:for>
</body>
</html>
  • The Namespace Import makes the \Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelper namespace available under the shorthand f.

  • The <f:for> essentially corresponds to foreach ($postings as $posting) in PHP.

  • With the dot-notation ({posting.title} or {posting.author.name}), you can traverse objects. In the latter example, the system calls $posting->getAuthor()->getName().

  • The <f:link.action /> tag is a so-called ViewHelper. It calls arbitrary PHP code, and in this case renders a link to the “details”-Action.

There is a lot more to show, including:

  • Layouts

  • Custom View Helpers

  • Boolean expression syntax

We invite you to explore Fluid some more, and please do not hesitate to give feedback!

Basic Concepts

This section describes all basic concepts available. This includes:

  • Namespaces

  • Variables / Object Accessors

  • View Helpers

  • Arrays

Namespaces

Fluid can be extended easily, thus it needs a way to tell where a certain tag is defined. This is done using namespaces, closely following the well-known XML behavior.

Namespaces can be defined in a template in two ways:

{namespace f=NeosFluidAdaptorViewHelpers}

This is a non-standard way only understood by Fluid. It links the f prefix to the PHP namespace \Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers.

<html xmlns:foo=”http://some/unique/namespace”>

The standard for declaring a namespace in XML. This will link the foo prefix to the URI http://some/unique/namespace and Fluid can look up the corresponding PHP namespace in your settings (so this is a two-piece configuration). This makes it possible for your XML editor to validate the template files and even use an XSD schema for auto completion.

A namespace linking f to \Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers is imported by default. All other namespaces need to be imported explicitly.

If using the XML namespace syntax the default pattern http://typo3.org/ns/<php namespace> is resolved automatically by the Fluid parser. If you use a custom XML namespace URI you need to configure the URI to PHP namespace mapping. The YAML syntax for that is:

Neos:
  Fluid:
    namespaces:
      'http://some/unique/namespace': 'My\Php\Namespace'

Variables and Object Accessors

A templating system would be quite pointless if it was not possible to display some external data in the templates. That’s what variables are for.

Suppose you want to output the title of your blog, you could write the following snippet into your controller:

$this->view->assign('blogTitle', $blog->getTitle());

Then, you could output the blog title in your template with the following snippet:

<h1>This blog is called {blogTitle}</h1>

Now, you might want to extend the output by the blog author as well. To do this, you could repeat the above steps, but that would be quite inconvenient and hard to read.

Note

The semantics between the controller and the view should be the following: The controller instructs the view to “render the blog object given to it”, and not to “render the Blog title, and the blog posting 1, …”.

Passing objects to the view instead of simple values is highly encouraged!

That is why the template language has a special syntax for object access. A nicer way of expressing the above is the following:

// This should go into the controller:
$this->view->assign('blog', $blog);
<!-- This should go into the template: -->
<h1>This blog is called {blog.title}, written by {blog.author}</h1>

Instead of passing strings to the template, we are passing whole objects around now - which is much nicer to use both from the controller and the view side. To access certain properties of these objects, you can use Object Accessors. By writing {blog.title}, the template engine will call a getTitle() method on the blog object, if it exists. By writing {blog.isPublic} or {blog.hasPosts}, the template engine will call isPublic() or hasPosts() respectively, unless getIsPublic() or getHasPosts() methods exist. Besides, you can use that syntax to traverse associative arrays and public properties.

Tip

Deep nesting is supported: If you want to output the email address of the blog author, then you can use {blog.author.email}, which is roughly equivalent to $blog->getAuthor()->getEmail().

View Helpers

All output logic is placed in View Helpers.

The view helpers are invoked by using XML tags in the template, and are implemented as PHP classes (more on that later).

This concept is best understood with an example:

{namespace f=Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers}
<f:link.action controller="Administration">Administration</f:link.action>

The example consists of two parts:

  • Namespace Declaration as explained earlier.

  • Calling the View Helper with the <f:link.action...> ... </f:link.action> tag renders a link.

Now, the main difference between Fluid and other templating engines is how the view helpers are implemented: For each view helper, there exists a corresponding PHP class. Let’s see how this works for the example above:

The <f:link.action /> tag is implemented in the class \Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers\Link\ActionViewHelper.

Note

The class name of such a view helper is constructed for a given tag as follows:

  1. The first part of the class name is the namespace which was imported (the namespace prefix f was expanded to its full namespace Neos\FluidAdaptor\ViewHelpers)

  2. The unqualified name of the tag, without the prefix, is capitalized (Link), and the postfix ViewHelper is appended.

The tag and view helper concept is the core concept of Fluid. All output logic is implemented through such ViewHelpers / tags! Things like if/else, for, … are all implemented using custom tags - a main difference to other templating languages.

Note

Some benefits of the class-based approach approach are:

  • You cannot override already existing view helpers by accident.

  • It is very easy to write custom view helpers, which live next to the standard view helpers

  • All user documentation for a view helper can be automatically generated from the annotations and code documentation.

Most view helpers have some parameters. These can be plain strings, just like in <f:link.action controller="Administration">...</f:link.action>, but as well arbitrary objects. Parameters of view helpers will just be parsed with the same rules as the rest of the template, thus you can pass arrays or objects as parameters.

This is often used when adding arguments to links:

<f:link.action controller="Blog" action="show" arguments="{singleBlog: blogObject}">
  ... read more
</f:link.action>

Here, the view helper will get a parameter called arguments which is of type array.

Warning

Make sure you do not put a space before or after the opening or closing brackets of an array. If you type arguments=" {singleBlog : blogObject}" (notice the space before the opening curly bracket), the array is automatically casted to a string (as a string concatenation takes place).

This also applies when using object accessors: <f:do.something with="{object}" /> and <f:do.something with=" {object}" /> are substantially different: In the first case, the view helper will receive an object as argument, while in the second case, it will receive a string as argument.

This might first seem like a bug, but actually it is just consistent that it works that way.

Boolean Expressions

Often, you need some kind of conditions inside your template. For them, you will usually use the <f:if> ViewHelper. Now let’s imagine we have a list of blog postings and want to display some additional information for the currently selected blog posting. We assume that the currently selected blog is available in {currentBlogPosting}. Now, let’s have a look how this works:

<f:for each="{blogPosts}" as="post">
  <f:if condition="{post} == {currentBlogPosting}">... some special output here ...</f:if>
</f:for>

In the above example, there is a bit of new syntax involved: {post} == {currentBlogPosting}. Intuitively, this says “if the post I’’m currently iterating over is the same as currentBlogPosting, do something.”

Why can we use this boolean expression syntax? Well, because the IfViewHelper has registered the argument condition as boolean. Thus, the boolean expression syntax is available in all arguments of ViewHelpers which are of type boolean.

All boolean expressions have the form X <comparator> Y, where:

  • <comparator> is one of the following: ==, >, >=, <, <=, % (modulo)

  • X and Y are one of the following:

    • a number (integer or float)

    • a string (in single or double quotes)

    • a JSON array

    • a ViewHelper

    • an Object Accessor (this is probably the most used example)

    • inline notation for ViewHelpers

Inline Notation for ViewHelpers

In many cases, the tag-based syntax of ViewHelpers is really intuitive, especially when building loops, or forms. However, in other cases, using the tag-based syntax feels a bit awkward – this can be demonstrated best with the <f:uri.resource>- ViewHelper, which is used to reference static files inside the Public/ folder of a package. That’s why it is often used inside <style> or <script>-tags, leading to the following code:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<f:uri.resource path='myCssFile.css' />" />

You will notice that this is really difficult to read, as two tags are nested into each other. That’s where the inline notation comes into play: It allows the usage of {f:uri.resource()} instead of <f:uri.resource />. The above example can be written like the following:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{f:uri.resource(path:'myCssFile.css')}" />

This is readable much better, and explains the intent of the ViewHelper in a much better way: It is used like a helper function.

The syntax is still more flexible: In real-world templates, you will often find code like the following, formatting a DateTime object (stored in {post.date} in the example below):

<f:format.date format="d-m-Y">{post.date}</f:format.date>

This can also be re-written using the inline notation:

{post.date -> f:format.date(format:'d-m-Y')}

This is also a lot better readable than the above syntax.

Tip

This can also be chained indefinitely often, so one can write:

{post.date -> foo:myHelper() -> bar:bla()}

Sometimes you’ll still need to further nest ViewHelpers, that is when the design of the ViewHelper does not allow that chaining or provides further arguments. Have in mind that each argument itself is evaluated as Fluid code, so the following constructs are also possible:

{foo: bar, baz: '{planet.manufacturer -> f:someother.helper(test: \'stuff\')}'}
{some: '{f:format.stuff(arg: \'foo'\)}'}

To wrap it up: Internally, both syntax variants are handled equally, and every ViewHelper can be called in both ways. However, if the ViewHelper “feels” like a tag, use the tag-based notation, if it “feels” like a helper function, use the Inline Notation.

Arrays

Some view helpers, like the SelectViewHelper (which renders an HTML select dropdown box), need to get associative arrays as arguments (mapping from internal to displayed name). See the following example for how this works:

<f:form.select options="{edit: 'Edit item', delete: 'Delete item'}" />

The array syntax used here is very similar to the JSON object syntax. Thus, the left side of the associative array is used as key without any parsing, and the right side can be either:

  • a number:

    {a : 1,
     b : 2
    }
    
  • a string; Needs to be in either single- or double quotes. In a double-quoted string, you need to escape the " with a \ in front (and vice versa for single quoted strings). A string is again handled as Fluid Syntax, this is what you see in example c:

    {a : 'Hallo',
     b : "Second string with escaped \" (double quotes) but not escaped ' (single quotes)"
     c : "{firstName} {lastName}"
    }
    
  • a boolean, best represented with their integer equivalents:

    {a : 'foo',
     notifySomebody: 1
     useLogging: 0
    }
    
  • a nested array:

    {a : {
        a1 : "bla1",
        a2 : "bla2"
      },
     b : "hallo"
    }
    
  • a variable reference (=an object accessor):

    {blogTitle : blog.title,
     blogObject: blog
    }
    

Note

All these array examples will result into an associative array. If you have to supply a non-associative, i.e. numerically-indexed array, you’ll write {0: 'foo', 1: 'bar', 2: 'baz'}.

Passing Data to the View

You can pass arbitrary objects to the view, using $this->view->assign($identifier, $object) from within the controller. See the above paragraphs about Object Accessors for details how to use the passed data.

Passing data to the view from outside a controller

You can also pass data to the view from outside a controller. This can be useful for general data, that you want to be available without having to assign it in each action.

Once the view is resolved inside the ActionController, the signal viewResolved is being emitted and you can add data.

This is possible with the Signal/Slot dispatcher from your Package.php file:

<?php
namespace Vendor\Namespace;

use Neos\Flow\Core\Bootstrap;
use Neos\Flow\Mvc\Controller\ActionController;
use Neos\Flow\Mvc\View\ViewInterface;
use Neos\Flow\Package\Package as BasePackage;


/**
 * The Flow Package
 */
class Package extends BasePackage
{

    /**
     * Invokes custom PHP code directly after the package manager has been initialized.
     *
     * @param Bootstrap $bootstrap The current bootstrap
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot(Bootstrap $bootstrap)
    {

        $dispatcher = $bootstrap->getSignalSlotDispatcher();

        $dispatcher->connect(ActionController::class, 'viewResolved', static function (ViewInterface $view) {
            $view->assign('settingPassedFromSignal', 'sun is shining');
        });

    }
}

Layouts

In almost all web applications, there are many similarities between each page. Usually, there are common templates or menu structures which will not change for many pages.

To make this possible in Fluid, we created a layout system, which we will introduce in this section.

Writing a Layout

Every layout is placed in the Resources/Private/Layouts directory, and has the file ending of the current format (by default .html). A layout is a normal Fluid template file, except there are some parts where the actual content of the target page should be inserted:

<html>
<head><title>My fancy web application</title></head>
<body>
<div id="menu">... menu goes here ...</div>
<div id="content">
  <f:render section="content" />
</div>
</body>
</html>

With this tag, a section from the target template is rendered.

Using a Layout

Using a layout involves two steps:

  • Declare which layout to use: <f:layout name="..." /> can be written anywhere on the page (though we suggest to write it on top, right after the namespace declaration) - the given name references the layout.

  • Provide the content for all sections used by the layout using the <f:section>...</f:section> tag: <f:section name="content">...</f:section>

For the above layout, a minimal template would look like the following:

<f:layout name="example.html" />

<f:section name="content">
  This HTML here will be outputted to inside the layout
</f:section>

Writing Your Own ViewHelper

As we have seen before, all output logic resides in View Helpers. This includes the standard control flow operators such as if/else, HTML forms, and much more. This is the concept which makes Fluid extremely versatile and extensible.

If you want to create a view helper which you can call from your template (as a tag), you just write a plain PHP class which needs to inherit from Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\AbstractViewHelper (or its subclasses). You need to implement only one method to write a view helper:

public function render()

Rendering the View Helper

We refresh what we have learned so far: When a user writes something like <blog:displayNews /> inside a template (and has imported the blog namespace to Neos\Blog\ViewHelpers), Fluid will automatically instantiate the class Neos\Blog\ViewHelpers\DisplayNewsViewHelper, and invoke the render() method on it.

This render() method should return the rendered content as string.

You have the following possibilities to access the environment when rendering your view helper:

  • $this->arguments is an associative array where you will find the values for all arguments you registered previously.

  • $this->renderChildren() renders everything between the opening and closing tag of the view helper and returns the rendered result (as string).

  • $this->templateVariableContainer is an instance of Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\ViewHelper\TemplateVariableContainer, with which you have access to all variables currently available in the template, and can modify the variables currently available in the template.

Note

If you add variables to the TemplateVariableContainer, make sure to remove every variable which you added again. This is a security measure against side-effects.

It is also not possible to add a variable to the TemplateVariableContainer if a variable of the same name already exists - again to prevent side effects and scope problems.

Implementing a for ViewHelper

Now, we will look at an example: How to write a view helper giving us the foreach functionality of PHP.

A loop could be called within the template in the following way:

<f:for each="{blogPosts}" as="blogPost">
  <h2>{blogPost.title}</h2>
</f:for>

So, in words, what should the loop do?

It needs two arguments:

  • each: Will be set to some object or array which can be iterated over.

  • as: The name of a variable which will contain the current element being iterated over

It then should do the following (in pseudo code):

foreach ($each as $$as) {
  // render everything between opening and closing tag
}

Implementing this is fairly straightforward, as you will see right now:

class ForViewHelper extends \Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\ViewHelper\AbstractViewHelper {

  /**
   * Renders a loop
   *
   * @param array $each Array to iterate over
   * @param string $as Iteration variable
   */
  public function render(array $each, $as) {
    $out = '';
    foreach ($each as $singleElement) {
      $this->variableContainer->add($as, $singleElement);
      $out .= $this->renderChildren();
      $this->variableContainer->remove($as);
    }
    return $out;
  }

}
  • The PHPDoc is part of the code! Fluid extracts the argument data types from the PHPDoc.

  • You can simply register arguments to the view helper by adding them as method arguments of the render() method.

  • Using $this->renderChildren(), everything between the opening and closing tag of the view helper is rendered and returned as string.

Declaring Arguments

We have now seen that we can add arguments just by adding them as method arguments to the render() method. There is, however, a second method to register arguments.

You can also register arguments inside a method called initializeArguments(). Call $this->registerArgument($name, $dataType, $description, $isRequired, $defaultValue=null) inside.

It depends how many arguments a view helper has. Sometimes, registering them as render() arguments is more beneficial, and sometimes it makes more sense to register them in initializeArguments().

AbstractTagBasedViewHelper

Many view helpers output an HTML tag - for example <f:link.action ...> outputs a <a href="..."> tag. There are many ViewHelpers which work that way.

Very often, you want to add a CSS class or a target attribute to an <a href="..."> tag. This often leads to repetitive code like below. (Don’t look at the code too thoroughly, it should just demonstrate the boring and repetitive task one would have without the AbstractTagBasedViewHelper):

class ActionViewHelper extends \Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\AbstractViewHelper {

  public function initializeArguments() {
    $this->registerArgument('class', 'string', 'CSS class to add to the link');
    $this->registerArgument('target', 'string', 'Target for the link');
    ... and more ...
  }

  public function render() {
    $output = '<a href="..."';
    if ($this->arguments['class']) {
      $output .= ' class="' . $this->arguments['class'] . '"';
    }
    if ($this->arguments['target']) {
      $output .= ' target="' . $this->arguments['target'] . '"';
    }
    $output .= '>';
    ... and more ...
    return $output;
  }

}

Now, the AbstractTagBasedViewHelper introduces two more methods you can use inside initializeArguments():

  • registerTagAttribute($name, $type, $description, $required): Use this method to register an attribute which should be directly added to the tag.

  • registerUniversalTagAttributes(): If called, registers the standard HTML attributes class, id, dir, lang, style, title.

Inside the AbstractTagBasedViewHelper, there is a TagBuilder available (with $this->tag) which makes building a tag a lot more straightforward.

With the above methods, the Link\ActionViewHelper from above can be condensed as follows:

class ActionViewHelper extends \Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\AbstractViewHelper {

    public function initializeArguments() {
        $this->registerUniversalTagAttributes();
    }

    /**
     * Render the link.
     *
     * @param string $action Target action
     * @param array $arguments Arguments
     * @param string $controller Target controller. If null current controllerName is used
     * @param string $package Target package. if null current package is used
     * @param string $subpackage Target subpackage. if null current subpackage is used
     * @param string $section The anchor to be added to the URI
     * @return string The rendered link
     */
    public function render($action = null, array $arguments = array(),
                           $controller = null, $package = null, $subpackage = null,
                           $section = '') {
        $uriBuilder = $this->controllerContext->getURIBuilder();
        $uri = $uriBuilder->uriFor($action, $arguments, $controller, $package, $subpackage, $section);
        $this->tag->addAttribute('href', $uri);
        $this->tag->setContent($this->renderChildren());

        return $this->tag->render();
    }

}

Additionally, we now already have support for all universal HTML attributes.

Tip

The TagBuilder also makes sure that all attributes are escaped properly, so to decrease the risk of Cross-Site Scripting attacks, make sure to use it when building tags.

additionalAttributes

Sometimes, you need some HTML attributes which are not part of the standard. As an example: If you use the Dojo JavaScript framework, using these non-standard attributes makes life a lot easier.

We think that the templating framework should not constrain the user in his possibilities – thus, it should be possible to add custom HTML attributes as well, if they are needed. Our solution looks as follows:

Every view helper which inherits from AbstractTagBasedViewHelper has a special argument called additionalAttributes which allows you to add arbitrary HTML attributes to the tag.

If the link tag from above needed a new attribute called fadeDuration, which is not part of HTML, you could do that as follows:

<f:link.action additionalAttributes="{fadeDuration : 800}">
    Link with fadeDuration set
</f:link.action>

This attribute is available in all tags that inherit from Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\ViewHelper\AbstractTagBasedViewHelper.

AbstractConditionViewHelper

To create a custom condition ViewHelper, you need to subclass the AbstractConditionViewHelper class, and implement your own static evaluateCondition() method that should return a boolean. The given RenderingContext can provide you with an object manager to get anything you might need to evaluate the condition together with the given arguments. Depending on the result of this method either the then or the else part is rendered.

@see NeosFluidAdaptorViewHelpersSecurityIfAccessViewHelper::evaluateCondition for a simple usage example.

Every Condition ViewHelper has a “then” and “else” argument, so it can be used like: <[aConditionViewHelperName] …. then=”condition true” else=”condition false” />, or as well use the “then” and “else” child nodes.

class IfAccessViewHelper extends \Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\ViewHelper\AbstractConditionViewHelper {

/**
 * @param null $arguments
 * @param RenderingContextInterface $renderingContext
 * @return boolean
 */
protected static function evaluateCondition($arguments = null, RenderingContextInterface $renderingContext)
{
    $objectManager = $renderingContext->getObjectManager();
    /** @var Context $securityContext */
    $securityContext = $objectManager->get(Context::class);

    if ($securityContext != null && !$securityContext->canBeInitialized()) {
        return false;
    }
    $privilegeManager = static::getPrivilegeManager($renderingContext);
    return $privilegeManager->isPrivilegeTargetGranted($arguments['privilegeTarget'], $arguments['parameters']);
}

By basing your condition ViewHelper on the AbstractConditionViewHelper, you will get the following features:

  • The ViewHelper will have two arguments defined, called then and else, which are very helpful in the Inline Notation.

  • The ViewHelper will automatically work with the <f:then> and <f:else>-Tags.

Widgets

Widgets are special ViewHelpers which encapsulate complex functionality. It can be best understood what widgets are by giving some examples:

  • <f:widget.paginate> renders a paginator, i.e. can be used to display large amounts of objects. This is best known from search engine result pages.

  • <f:widget.autocomplete> adds autocompletion functionality to a text field.

  • More widgets could include a Google Maps widget, a sortable grid, …

Internally, widgets consist of an own Controller and View.

Using Widgets

Using widgets inside your templates is really simple: Just use them like standard ViewHelpers, and consult their documentation for usage examples. An example for the <f:widget.paginate> follows below:

<f:widget.paginate objects="{blogs}" as="paginatedBlogs" configuration="{itemsPerPage: 10}">
  // use {paginatedBlogs} as you used {blogs} before, most certainly inside
  // a <f:for> loop.
</f:widget.paginate>

In the above example, it looks like {blogs} contains all Blog objects, thus you might wonder if all objects were fetched from the database. However, the blogs are not fetched from the database until you actually use them, so the Paginate Widget will adjust the query sent to the database and receive only the small subset of objects.

So, there is no negative performance overhead in using the Paginate Widget.

Writing widgets

We already mentioned that a widget consists of a controller and a view, all triggered by a ViewHelper. We’ll now explain these different components one after each other, explaining the API you have available for creating your own widgets.

ViewHelper

All widgets inherit from Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\Widget\AbstractWidgetViewHelper. The ViewHelper of the widget is the main entry point; it controls the widget and sets necessary configuration for the widget.

To implement your own widget, the following things need to be done:

  • The controller of the widget needs to be injected into the $controller property.

  • Inside the render()-method, you should call $this->initiateSubRequest(), which will initiate a request to the controller which is set in the $controller property, and return the Response object.

  • By default, all ViewHelper arguments are stored as Widget Configuration, and are also available inside the Widget Controller. However, to modify the Widget Configuration, you can override the getWidgetConfiguration() method and return the configuration which you need there.

There is also a property $ajaxWidget, which we will explain later in Ajax Widgets.

Controller

A widget contains one controller, which must inherit from Neos\FluidAdaptor\Core\Widget\AbstractWidgetController, which is an ActionController. There is only one difference between the normal ActionController and the AbstractWidgetController: There is a property $widgetConfiguration, containing the widget’s configuration which was set in the ViewHelper.

Fluid Template

The Fluid templates of a widget are normal Fluid templates as you know them, but have a few ViewHelpers available additionally:

<f:uri.widget>

Generates an URI to another action of the widget.

<f:link.widget>

Generates a link to another action of the widget.

<f:renderChildren>

Can be used to render the child nodes of the Widget ViewHelper, possibly with some more variables declared.

Ajax Widgets

Widgets have special support for AJAX functionality. We’ll first explain what needs to be done to create an AJAX compatible widget, and then explain it with an example.

To make a widget AJAX-aware, you need to do the following:

  • Set $ajaxWidget to true inside the ViewHelper. This will generate an unique AJAX Identifier for the Widget, and store the WidgetConfiguration in the user’s session on the server.

  • Inside the index-action of the Widget Controller, generate the JavaScript which triggers the AJAX functionality. There, you will need a URI which returns the AJAX response. For that, use the following ViewHelper inside the template:

    <f:uri.widget ajax="true" action="..." arguments="..." />
    
  • Inside the template of the AJAX request, <f:renderChildren> is not available, because the child nodes of the Widget ViewHelper are not accessible there.

XSD schema generation

A XSD schema file for your ViewHelpers can be created by executing

./flow documenation:generatexsd <Your>\\<Package>\\ViewHelpers
    --target-file /some/directory/your.package.xsd

Then import the XSD file in your favorite IDE and map it to the namespace http://typo3.org/ns/<Your/Package>/ViewHelpers. Add the namespace to your Fluid template by adding the xmlns attribute to the root tag (usually <xml …> or <html …>).

Note

You are able to use a different XML namespace pattern by specifying the -–xsd-namespace argument in the generatexsd command.

If you want to use this inside partials, you can use the “section” argument of the render ViewHelper in order to only render the content of the partial.

Partial:

<html xmlns:x=”http://typo3.org/ns/Your/Package/ViewHelpers”>
<f:section name=”content”>
    <x:yourViewHelper />
</f:section>

Template:

<f:render partial=”PartialName” section=”content” />