The ViewController

eZ Publish comes with a native controller to display your content, known as the ViewController. It is called each time you try to reach a content from its Url Alias (good looking URI generated for any content) and is able to render any content previously edited in the admin interface or via the eZ Publish Public API.

It can also be called directly by its direct URI : /content/location/<locationId>

A content can also have different view types (full page, abstract in a list, block in a landing page...). By default the view type is full (for full page), but it can be anything (line, block...).

View selection

To display a content, the ViewController uses a view manager which selects the appropriate template depending on matching rules.

Content view template

A content view template is like any other template, with several specific aspects.

Available variables

Template inheritance

Like any template, a content view template can use template inheritance. However keep in mind that your content can be also requested via sub-requests (see below how to render embedded content objects). In this case your template should probably not extend your main layout.

In this regard, it is recommended to use inheritance this way:

{% extends noLayout ? viewbaseLayout : "AcmeDemoBundle::pagelayout.html.twig" %}

{% block content %}
...
{% endblock %}

Exposing additional variables

It is possible to expose additional variables in a content view template. See parameters injection in content views.

Making links to other locations

Linking to other locations is fairly easy and is done with native path() Twig helper (or url() if you want to generate absolute URLs). You just have to pass it the Location object and path() will generate the URLAlias for you.

{# Assuming "location" variable is a valid eZ\Publish\API\Repository\Values\Content\Location object #}
<a href="{{ path( location ) }}">Some link to a location</a>

If you don't have the Location object, but only its ID, you can generate the URLAlias the following way:

<a href="{{ path( "ez_urlalias", {"locationId": 123} ) }}">Some link to a location, with its Id only</a>

Render embedded content objects

Rendering an embedded content from a Twig template is pretty straight forward as you just need to do a subrequest with ez_content controller.

Using ez_content controller

This controller is exactly the same as the ViewController presented above and has 2 main actions:

• viewLocation to render a location (same as when accessing a content through an URLAlias)
• viewContent to render a content

You can use this controller from templates with the following syntax:

{{ render( controller( "ez_content:viewLocation", {"locationId": 123, "viewType": "line"} ) ) }}

The example above allows you to render a Location which ID is 123, with the view type line.

Available arguments

As any controller, you can pass arguments to ez_content:viewLocation or ez_content:viewContent to fit your needs.

{{ render(
      controller( 
          "ez_content:viewLocation", 
          {
              "locationId": 123,
              "viewType": "line",
              "params": { "some_variable": "some_value" }
          }
      )
) }}

ESI

Just as for regular Symfony controllers, you can take advantage of ESI and use different cache levels:

{{ render_esi( controller( "ez_content:viewLocation", {"locationId": 123, "viewMode": "line"} ) ) }}

 Asynchronous rendering

Symfony also supports asynchronous content rendering with the help of hinclude.js library.

{{ render_hinclude( controller( "ez_content:viewLocation", {"locationId": 123, "viewMode": "line"} ) ) }}