PW Utils

Utility functions for writing templates for the ProcessWire CMS

Might even be viewed as a kind of optional "template language" for ProcessWire.

Basic idea

The basic idea of this micro-library is to make writing things like this simpler:

echo "<ul>";
echo "<li>Home</li>";
foreach( $page->children as $child ) {
    echo "<li><a href='" . $child->url . "'>" . $child->title . "</a></li>";
}
echo "</ul>";

With PW Utils, one would instead write:

echo ul( li( 'Home' ) . 
        do_for( $page->children, function($p) { 
            return li( a( $p->title, $p->url ) ); 
        })
    );

This might not look as very big changes at first, but our experience is that when working practically with the templating, the more "functional" (rather than string-padding:y) approach in PWUtils, makes it much easier to make changes to the code without breaking the number of quotes, and also tends to make the code a slight bit easier to read, in our opinion.

Installation

1. cd /site/templates
2. git clone https://github.com/samuell/pwutils.git
3. ln -s pwtutils/pwutils.php .
4. Add the following code at the top, inside your template php files:

<?php include("pwutils.php"); ?>

More Examples

Find a few more examples below:

Linking Sibling pages

Without PWUtils

echo '<div class="w-col w-col-8 navigation-column">';
echo "<a href='/' class='nav-link'>Welcome</a>";

foreach( $page->siblings as $sibling ) {
    echo "<a href='" . $sibling->url . "' class='nav-link'>" . $sibling->title . "</a>";
}
echo '</div>';

With PWUtils

$a_attrs = array( 'class' => 'nav-link' );
$div_attrs = array( 'class' => 'w-col w-col-8 navigation-column' );

echo div( a( '/', 'Welcome', $a_attrs ) .
        do_for( $page->siblings, function($p) {
            return a( $p->url, $p->title, $a_attrs );
        } ), 
        $div_attrs
    );

Linking and styling images

Without PWUtils

foreach( $page->image as $img ) { 
    echo "<a href='" . $img->url . "' >";
    echo "<img src='" . $img->url . "' alt='Some alt-text' style='border: 1px solid black;' />";
    echo "</a>";
}

With PWUtils

$styleattrs = array( 'style' => 'border: 1px solid black;' );

foreach( $page->image as $img ) { 
    echo a( $img->url, img( $img->url, 'Some alt-text', $styleattrs ));
}