FreeMarker (Templating) API

Each page and component content type in Crafter CMS generally has it’s own view. Crafter Engine, which is in charge of rendering this views, uses Freemarker as the template engine to generate the HTML returned to the client. Documentation for Freemarker can be found at http://freemarker.org.

The most important variable available in the page and component Freemarker templates is the contentModel. Through the contentModel you have access to the content itself. So if in the page you defined a variable name title, you can get the value of title with ${contentModel.title}. Or if you defined a repeater named links, and under it url fields, then accessing the url links is just a matter of iterating the list using <#list contentModel.links.url as url>. The type of the contentModel is SiteItem, so you can also call the methods of that class if the nested property access described previously is not enough, or if you need to access other properties like the storeUrl.

Crafter Engine also populates templates with other useful variables, described below.

Name
Description
Type
siteItemService
Allows access to the site
content.
SiteItemService
urlTransformationService
Service for transforming URLs,
like transforming the content
URL of a page to the web or
render URL.
UrlTransformationService
searchService
Service that can be used to
execute search queries against
Crafter Search.
SearchService
applicationContext
Provides access to the Crafter
Engine’s Spring beans and site
beans defined in
config/spring/application-
context.xml.
ApplicationContextAccessor
globalProperties
Provides access to global
configuration properties
defined in
server-config.properties.
PropertySourcesPropertyResolver
navBreadcrumbBuilder
Helper class that returns the
list of path components in an
URL, to create navigation
breadcrumbs.
BreadcrumbBuilder
navTreeBuilder
Helper class that creates
navigation trees to
facilitate rendering.
NavTreeBuilder
tenantsResolver
Can be used to retrieve the
Profile tenants associated to
the current site.
TenantsResolver
modePreview
Flag that indicates that Engine is
being executed in preview mode
(also the value of the
crafter.engine.preview property)
Boolean
crafterEnv
Indicates the value of the
crafter.engine.environment
property
String
siteConfig
The current site Configuration
loaded from /config/site.xml.
XMLConfiguration
siteContext
The current SiteContext
SiteContext
application
The servlet context
ServletContextHashModel
request
The current request
HttpRequestHashModel
requestParameters
The parameter values for the
current request
HttpRequestParametersHashModel
cookies
The cookie values for the
current request
Map
session
The current session
HttpSessionHashModel
locale
The current locale for the
current user
Locale
authentication
The current authentication (if
the user has logged in),
created by the
Crafter Security Provider
Authentication
profile
The current profile (if the
user has logged in), created
by the
Crafter Security Provider
Profile

Rendering Navigation

Crafter Engine provides the option of rendering automatically the navigation for you, just by using the macro renderNavigation:

Using the Navigation Macro
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<#import "/templates/web/navigation2/navigation.ftl" as nav>

<@nav.renderNavigation "/site/website", 1, true />
  • The first argument of the macro is the root path of the navigation tree, which in this case is the root path of all pages.
  • The second argument is the level of the navigation tree, which in the case of the example, is only the pages of the first level.
  • The third argument is optional and indicates if the top level item found in the root path should be included in the markup.
  • The Place In Nav field is also used by the renderNavigation macro to determine if a page should be included in the navigation or not.

Rendering Breadcrumbs

Crafter also offers a renderBreadcrumb macro to easily generate a dynamic list with all the parent pages of a specific url.

Using the Breadcrumb Macro
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<#import "/templates/web/navigation2/breadcrumb.ftl" as breadcrumb>

<@breadcrumb.renderBreadcrumb contentModel.storeUrl "/site/website/articles" />
  • The first argument is the full url of the item to generate the breadcrumb.
  • The second argument is the root path that will be skipped in the list of items returned, if no value is given the default is “/site/website” (usually this is the home page).

Using Custom Macros

Both renderNavigation and renderBreadcrumb use other macros to render the items. In the case of navigation each type of item has it’s own macro:

  • renderRootItem: for the top level item.
  • renderNavItem: for items with no sub-items.
  • renderNavItemWithSubItems: for items with sub-items.
  • renderNavSubItem: for sub-items with no other sub-items.
  • renderNavSubItemWithSubItems: for sub-items with other sub-items.

For breadcrumb there is only one type of item:

  • renderBreadcrumbItem

Engine includes a default implementation that can be found in templates/web/navigation2/nav-macros.ftl and templates/web/navigation2/breadcrumb-macros.ftl but it also provides the option to use your own sets of macros, which you’ll probably want since the navigation HTML is generally specific to the site.

Default Nav Macros
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<#macro renderNavItem navItem>
   <li <#if navItem.active>class="active"</#if>><a href="${navItem.url}">${navItem.label}</a></li>
</#macro>

<#macro renderRootItem navItem>
   <@renderNavItem navItem/>
</#macro>

<#macro renderNavItemWithSubItems navItem>
   <li <#if navItem.active>class="dropdown active"<#else>class="dropdown"</#if>>
       <a class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" href="${navItem.url}">${navItem.label}</a>
       <ul class="dropdown-menu">
           <#nested>
       </ul>
   </li>
</#macro>

<#macro renderNavSubItem navItem>
   <@renderNavItem navItem/>
</#macro>

<#macro renderNavSubItemWithSubItems navItem>
   <li class="dropdown-submenu">
       <a href="${navItem.url}">${navItem.label}</a>
       <ul class="dropdown-menu">
           <#nested>
       </ul>
   </li>
</#macro>
Default Breadcrumb Macros
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<#macro renderBreadcrumbItem item >
   <#if item.active>
       <li class="active">${item.label}</li>
   <#else>
       <li><a href="${item.url}">${item.label}</a></li>
   </#if>
</#macro>

You can define your own macros in an additional Freemarker template and include and optional parameter with the namespace that was given in the import tag:

Using Custom Navigation Macros
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<#import "/templates/web/navigation2/navigation.ftl" as nav>
<#import "/templates/web/navigation2/breadcrumb.ftl" as breadcrumb>
<#import "/templates/web/components/custom-nav-macros.ftl" as customNav>

<@nav.renderNavigation "/site/website", 1, false, customNav />

<@breadcrumb.renderBreadcrumb contentModel.storeUrl, "/site/website/articles", customNav />

Note

If you use custom macros for navigation, you need to define each one with the same name as shown in the list and include all parameters according to the default implementation provided by Engine.

In case the structure provided by the macros is not suitable for your need you can also use the beans to get the navigation tree or breadcrumb list in a Groovy script:

Navigation Tree from Groovy
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def rootPath = "/site/website"
templateModel.navTree = navTreeBuilder.getNavTree(rootPath, 2, contentModel.storeUrl)
templateModel.breadcrumb = navBreadcrumb.getBreadcrumb(contentModel.storeUrl, rootPath)

Note

These beans are the same used internally by the builtin macros, they will return NavItem objects.

Keeping Templates Simple

You can access all Crafter Engine services directly from the Freemarker templates as described in the previous sections, however it is a good practice to keep logic and complex operations outside of the templates to simplify debugging and maintenance. An easy way to extract logic from the templates is using Groovy’s closures:

Page or Component Script
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// Add a closure to the templateModel map, in this case it will find if a page has a custom
// nav icon defined in the xml descriptor.

templateModel.getNavIcon = { item ->
  def storeUrl = urlTransformationService.transform("renderUrlToStoreUrl", item.url)
  def siteItem = siteItemService.getSiteItem(storeUrl)
  if(siteItem) {
    def navIcon = siteItem.navIcon?.text
    if(navIcon) {
      return navIcon
    }
  }
  return "fa-file-o"
}
Page or Component Template
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<!-- Now the closure is available to use in the template, you only have to use the same name
     from the script and use the `call` method. -->

<i class="fa ${getNavIcon.call(navItem)}">

If you have a large amount of closures or operations that need to be shared between multiple templates then you should consider creating a Groovy class instead:

Custom Service Class
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// Define a class with all the logic

package org.site.service

class NavIconService {

  def urlTransformationService
  def siteItemService
  def defaultIcon

  def getNavItem(item) {
    ...
    return this.defaultIcon
  }

}
Site Application Context file
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<!-- Add a bean definition using the new class -->

<bean id="navIconService" class="org.site.service.NavIconService">
  <property name="urlTransformationService" ref="crafter.urlTransformationService"/>
  <property name="siteItemService" ref="crafter.siteItemService"/>
  <property name="defaultIcon" value="${nav.defaultIcon}"/>
</bean>
Site Configuration file
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<!-- If needed the bean can use external configuration for easy management -->

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<site>
  ...
  <nav>
    <defaultIcon>fa-file-o</defaultIcon>
  </nav>
  ...
</site>
Template
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<!-- Now the bean can be use just like Crafter built-in services -->

<i class="fa ${navIconService.getNavIcon(navItem)}">

Note

All beans defined in the Engine Site Application Context file will be available in templates.