190 lines
6.6 KiB
Text
190 lines
6.6 KiB
Text
This is a README file for all interested in the templating system used
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by Koha. It contains guidelines ans descriptions, please feel free to
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make comments and contributions to this file.
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1. Introduction
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The advantage of a templating system is the separation of code and
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design. It is much easier to read the HTML and get an imagination of
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what it will look like without having it shattered by declarations and
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functions. And it is also nicer being able to alter some functions
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without worrying about the web design.
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On the other hand, templating stands in contradiction on scripting the
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procedural way; it forces object-oriented programming.
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With templates Koha can be made fully skinnable: we speak of themes,
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and can support different languages.
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2. How does it work
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The short version: Instead of printing HTML from your script, you only
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define some template parameters.
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You design your HTML page without code in it, and where you need to
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insert data generated by the script. You can pass this data from the
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template parameters via special tags.
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Indeed, there is a little more to know.
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I recomend reading the documentation to the HTML::Template module.
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You can obtain it from http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/HTML/Template.html
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3. How is it implemented in Koha
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Koha uses templates to handle different themes and languages. In
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the CVS module "koha", there is a subdirectory for the design files:
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koha-tmpl. This subdirectory can be checked out from CVS as if it
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were a CVS module "koha-tmpl".
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It contains two directories for the OPAC and the intranet templates:
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opac-tmpl and intranet-tmpl.
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Each of this directories reflects the available themes and their
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languages. The default theme is "default" and the default language is
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"en" (we use the 2-letter abbreviations, en => English, fr => French,
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de => German and so on).
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If you, for example, want to write a template for the OPAC
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part of the "custommade" theme in Polish, it has to go in
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koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/custommade/pl/template.tmpl.
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The template files will not reside in your web tree. If
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you want to use an image, you have to put this in your web
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tree, which is organized the same way as the template tree
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(koha-html/opac-html/custommade/pl/images/image.gif).
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If you have files (either templates or files in the webspace)
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which are the same for all themes or languages use the
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"all" directory. For example the "background.jpg" image, which
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is the same for all languages within a theme should go in
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koha-html/(intranet|opac)-html/custommade/all/images/background.jpg).
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4. How to use it
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Simply add an entry to the systempreferences: name=theme,
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value=nameoftheme.
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If you want your users be able to override your theme settings enter
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name=allowthemeoverride value=customtheme1,customtheme2,... (names of
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themes you want to be allowed) to the preferences.
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For the language you normally don't have to enter anything, the
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preferences of the user's browser will be used.
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If anything is wrong you can specify a languageorder with the
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following entry: name=languageorder value=en,fr,de,es (or whatever
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comma-separated languages you want)
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If you want to specify a directory for the templates you can do so in
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koha.conf with 'templatedirectory=younameit'.
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5. Rules and hints
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5.1 For the templates
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- Use absolute paths; relative paths in HTML tags would be relative to
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the script's position and relative paths in <TMPL_INCLUDE> would be
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relative to the template.
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- You don't have to make templates for everything in your custom theme
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or language. If you omit a template in a language, the template of
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next available language is used. (Languages are tried in the order of
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the user's browser settings.)
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If there is no template in the specified language in a theme, a
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different language will be chosen and NOT a different theme.
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If you omit a template in all languages, the template of the default
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theme will be used.
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- Include comments with useful information such as the template's
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location; this simplifies debugging
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- Use the same name for the template and the script (with different
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extensions of course)
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5.2 for the scripts
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- Use meaningful English (abbreviations) as parameter names
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- If you fetch a list of data, pass it completely and let the designer
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decide which data to use.
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- Working with arrays and loops is always better, even if you have
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only three similar rows.
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- Don't let the script generate html and pass the output to the
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template
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6. Templating stuff in Koha
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# FIXME
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# pathtotemplate() call has been replaced with get_template_and_user() call
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#
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# This section should be rewritten to describe the new interface.
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#
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# In the meantime, look at an example script like member.pl or search.pl
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#
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#
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This section is to describe scripts, modules and functions within them
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to handle with themes, languages and other templating stuff.
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If you write something which matches this, please add a brief
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description here (e.g. function calls and return values).
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- function %path = pathtotemplate(%hash) in C4::Output
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Takes a hash with the following keys:
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-template: the name of the template file (e.g. 'mytemplate.tmpl')
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-type: 'opac', 'intranet', 'none' or something you specify, decides
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which directory to lookup; defaults to intranet
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-'opac': /somedirs/opac-tmpl/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'intranet': /somedirs/intranet-tmpl/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'none': /somedirs/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'my own words': /somedirs/my own
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words/theme/language/template.tmpl
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somedirs is 1. the path-parameter if specified 2. the
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templatedirectory in koha.conf, 3. the includes + '/templates', 4.
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the includes
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-theme: you can manually set a theme (e.g. 'customtheme') only if
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'allowthemeoverride' in systempreferences is set
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-language: you can manually set a language (e.g. 'es')
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-path: you can manually set the path to search for templates (e.g.
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'/usr/koha/sometesttemplates')
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You only need to pass the last three parameters if you want to
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override the preferences for some reasons
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Returns:
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- $path{'path'}: the complete+absolute path of the template (e.g.
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'/somedirs.../opac-tmpl/customtheme/es/mytemplate.tmpl')
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- $path{'fondlanguage'}: '1' if the requested template was available
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in the requested language
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- $path{'fondtheme'}: '1' if the requested template was available in
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the requested theme
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7. Links
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Do you have good links for the templater?
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The HTML::Template documentation:
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http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/HTML/Template.html
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Comments to dnmeid@gmx.de Dorian
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