Rendering Pages

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also see: Common Page Elements

Rendering Pages

The prototype still uses a weird type of OOP based render-Engine. It is best understood by looking at this code from pages/home.php:

   function home() {
       global $PH;				# give pagehandler
   
       ### set up page ####
       {
           $page= new Page();		# create new page
       	$page->cur_tab='home';		# the the section tab
       	$page->crumbs=array(		# create bread-crumbs
       		"Home",
   
       	);
       	$page->options=array(		# create options
               $PH->getLink('error','Discussions'),
   	    
       	);
   
           $page->title="Thomas Mann";	# set page-title
           $page->type="Home";		
           $page->title_minor="May 25th";
           echo(new PageHeader);		# write the pageheader and headline
       }
   

All html-rendering is done through classes defined in the render/-directory. Here we define derived class of PageElements. PageElements overwrite the __toString()-method. So when used in string-context the will return it's html-code:

 echo (new PageContentOpen_Columns);	# start the content-div

alternatively you could use the render-method:

 $list->render_tfoot(); 

The whole render-stuff is not very brillant and should be replaced by a template-engine in the long term. But for now it gives a far more flexible handling than the netoffice2.x-blockClass.

Pros:

• fast
• small code
• easily adjustable by deriving and tuning pageElement-classes

Cons:

• overwriting already defined class is tricky
• implementing different themes would require to reimplement the complete render-directory
• passing html-fragments in blockList-Colums is ugly

Read more about render-classes...