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NoCMS Blocks

Templates and zones for blocks

It's usual that the blocks are assigned to placeholders of our views where they belong. As an example, a view with a sidebar column may need some of the blocks placed in the sidebar zone and others in the content one. It's even possible that the layouts allowed in the sidebar may not be allowed in the content area and viceversa.

This templates and zones can be defined in the engine configuration, along with the layouts allowed in each zone.

NoCms::Blocks.configure do |config|

config.templates = {

'two-columns' => {
  blocks: [:general1, :general2],
  models: ["SlottedPage"],
  zones: {
    header: {
      blocks: [:header1, :header2]
    },
    body: {
      blocks: [:body]
    },
    sidebar: {
      blocks: [:sidebar1, :sidebar2]
    },
    footer: {
    }
  }
}

} end

This configuration will create a two-columns template with 4 zones (header, body, sidebar, footer).

Assigning blocks to zones

NoCms::Blocks::BlockSlot and NoCms::Blocks::Block models have a template_zone attribute where will be stored which zone every block belongs to. You can fetch the slots and blocks for a zone using the for_template_zone scope.

If you're attaching the blocks to a model (e.g. a Page model) of your own you will need to store which template is used by the instance of your model. We will come back later to this.

Blocks restrictions

If you're using NoCms::Blocks::BlockSlot there's a validation that checks that only blocks from valid layouts are attached into a zone.

How is this restriction configured? with the blocks options for both the template and the zones.

  • The blocks and lazy_blocks options for template defines blocks that are allowed in all the zones of a template.
  • The blocks and lazy_blocks options for a zone defines blocks allowed in just one zone.

This means that the list of blocks allowed for one zone is the sum of the blocks globally allowed for the template and the ones explicitly allowed for the zone.

If this sum is empty then we assume there's no restriction and every layout is allowed.

Lazy blocks

Lazy blocks that are meant to be configurable and included in the templates and zones but which rendering is not executed in regular controllers and views but through some lazy load technique such an ajax request.

More info when reading about how to render the blocks in your templates.

Configuring a block as a lazy one will allow us in a controller (e.g a pages controller) to perform different actions for lazy blocks, such as not loading data from the database that will no be used.

Since the same block may have different behaviour depending on the template it's loaded, the configuration is set at a template or zone level so we can have a greater level of flexibility in our configuration.

Attaching a template to a model

Imagine you want to set up templates to be used in your model (e.g. a Page model). You will need a template attribute in your model to store which template is assigned.

You can add this attribute by using the standard migration generator from Rails or use the nocms:blocks:template_migration generator which will receive the name of your model and generate the template migration automatically.

After generating the migration you must include the NoCms::Blocks::Concerns::ModelWithTemplate concern in your model.

class Page

  include NoCms::Blocks::Concerns::ModelWithTemplate

end

This will give you the template_config and template_zones methods that will give you access to the configuration for the selected template.

And you will have an easy way to access to the slots or blocks (depending if you're using NoCms::Blocks::BlockSlot or just if you're using NoCms::Blocks::Block) for a zone:

page.block_slots.for_template_zone(:header)
page.blocks.for_template_zone(:header)

You can now iterate through this blocks or slots and use the render helpers to fill yout zones in your Rails template.

Model restrictions

The blocks can be used in several models in your app (e.g. you may have Page and Product models and you want blocks to be attached to both models).

You can use the models option in the template configuration to restrict a template to be used only in a some models. If no model option is set or it's blank then we assume there's no restriction.