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 item from its Url Alias (human readable, translatable URI generated for any content based on URL patterns defined per Content Type) 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 item 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 item, the ViewController uses a view manager which selects the appropriate template depending on matching rules.

Location 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 %}

Rendering content's fields

As stated above, a view template receives the requested Content object, holding all fields.

In order to display the fields' value the way you want, you can either manipulate the Field Value object itself or use a template.

Getting raw Field value

Having access to the Content object in the template, you can use its public methods to access to all the information you need. You can also use ez_field_value helper to get the Field value in the current language if translation is available.

{# With the following, myFieldValue will be in the content's main language, regardless the current language #}
{% set myFieldValue = content.getFieldValue( 'some_field_identifier' ) %}
 
{# Here myTranslatedFieldValue will be in the current language if a translation is available. If not, the content's main language will be used #}
{% set myTranslatedFieldValue = ez_field_value( content, 'some_field_identifier' ) %}

Using the FieldType's template block

All built-in FieldTypes come with a piece of Twig template code you can take advantage of by calling ez_render_field() helper.

{{ ez_render_field( content, 'some_field_identifier' ) }}

Refer to ez_render_field() reference page for further information.

Rendering Content name

The name of a content item is its generic "title", generated by the repository considering several rules in the FieldDefinition. It usually consists in the normalized value of the first field.

There are 2 different ways to access to this special property:

• Through the name property of ContentInfo (not translated).
• Through VersionInfo with the TranslationHelper (translated).

Name property in ContentInfo

This property is the actual content name, but in main language only (so it is not translated).

<h2>Content name: {{ content.contentInfo.name }}</h2>

$contentName = $content->contentInfo->name;

Translated name

The translated name is held in VersionInfo object, in the names property which consists of hash indexed by locale. You can easily retrieve it in the right language via the TranslationHelper service.

<h2>Translated content name: {{ ez_content_name( content ) }}</h2>
<h3>Also works from ContentInfo : {{ ez_content_name( content.contentInfo ) }}</h3>

You can refer to ez_content_name() reference page for further information.

// Assuming we're in a controller action
$translationHelper = $this->get( 'ezpublish.translation_helper' );
 
// From Content
$translatedContentName = $translationHelper->getTranslatedContentName( $content );
// From ContentInfo
$translatedContentName = $translationHelper->getTranslatedContentNameByContentInfo( $contentInfo );

You can also force a locale in a 2nd argument:

{# Force fre-FR locale. #}
<h2>{{ ez_content_name( content, 'fre-FR' ) }}</h2>

// Assuming we're in a controller action
$translatedContentName = $this->get( 'ezpublish.translation_helper' )->getTranslatedName( $content, 'fre-FR' );

Exposing additional variables

It is possible to expose additional variables in a content view template. See parameters injection in content views or use your own custom controller to render a content item/location.

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>

As of  / , you can also use the Content ID. In that case generated link will point to the content main location.

<a href="{{ path( "ez_urlalias", {"contentId": 456} ) }}">Some link from a contentId</a>

See also : Cross SiteAccess links

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 item through an URLAlias)
• viewContent to render a content item

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" }
          }
      )
) }}

Render block

/ 

You can specify which controller will be called for a specific block view match, much like defining custom controllers for location view or content view match.

Also, since there are two possible actions with which one can view a block: ez_page:viewBlock and ez_page:viewBlockById, it is possible to specify a controller action with a signature matching either one of original actions.

Example of configuration in ezpublish/config/ezpublish.yml:

ezpublish:
    system:
        eng_frontend_group:
            block_view:
                ContentGrid:
                    template: NetgenSiteBundle:block:content_grid.html.twig
                    controller: NetgenSiteBundle:Block:viewContentGridBlock
                    match:
                        Type: ContentGrid

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, "viewType": "line"} ) ) }}

 Asynchronous rendering

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

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

Display a default text

If you want to display a default text while a controller is loaded asynchronously, you have to pass a second parameters to your render_hinclude twig function.

{{ render_hinclude( controller( 'EzCorporateDesignBundle:Header:userLinks' ), { 'default': "<div style='color:red'>loading</div>" }) }}

See also :  How to use a custom controller to display a content item or location