Today we implement a long awaited feature. It is so-called template inheritance. The QUIQQER system is based on templates, these are blueprints for your content. So to speak the look of your website or e-commerce shop.
There are different types of templates, templates for controls, templates for mails or templates for bricks but today it is about the basic template itself.
QUIQQER has been allowing templates from bricks and controls to be overwritten for several years now. But the new feature goes a bit further. Let's say you are a template designer and want to change a little bit of an existing template. For example the complete footer. You want to change the structure, this was currently only possible by copying the complete template package and then implementing your changes.
From now on you have the possibility to create a new template package and assign a template parent to it. Your template now accesses all templates which are available in the Parent Template, if your template package does not have it.
However, if your template has its own template, this will be used. The whole works not only with HTML files, it works with all files which are exists in your template. CSS, Images and HTML!
The changes cover several core modules.
To make it all work, first the package.xml had to be extended so far that a parent can be specified.
(https://github.com/QUIQQER/utils/commit/f1457da7b2c4f287b85a9816eaba4afe4b028b95)
A package.xml will look something like this:
The main work was to extend the central template class so that if a template has a parent, this is also taken into consideration.
That was the easy part, now the fun is just beginning commit.
To make the whole thing easier, the package class was extended by two methods which can be used to determine whether this package has a template parent or not.
Since the package extension made it easier to query the whole thing, the template class had to be extended.
[Mega awesome Image with a lot of code that nobody understands :D] (https://github.com/QUIQQER/QUIQQER/commit/9efcf44cf746954894c79342d7c961275d2de796#diff-f5c9b82e0e526b1b83d7bcab3254f3e5)
Well, these changes only affect the main files of the template. Of course, this is a start and you can do a lot with it. Basically we have thought a bit further.
Since it was partly already possible to overwrite certain control templates, a Smarty function was specially developed here at that time {fetch}. This function will also be used to use parts of a template.
The changes in the Smarty module now make it perfect and with these changes it is now possible to make each subarea dependent.
What is possible now? As a template designer, you can use our e-commerce template as a starting point and only overwrite parts of it. You don't have to spend weeks and months to design products that look the same in 90% of cases anyway or you just redesign the product and let the rest of the parent template take over.
This extension brings QUIQQER another huge step forward to quickly and easily build SaaS, E-commerce shops or simple websites.
Thanks for reading,
Hen, for PCSG Developers
