helpfulrobot / touchcast-modulator

A SilverStripe module for dynamically creating pages from smaller components

SilverStripe Modulator

Modulator is an extendable system for creating sub-page components. It achieves this by attaching DataObjects to the page in place of the traditional Content body.

Features

• Draft and publish control on a per-module level
• Drag-and-drop re-ordering of modules
• An extendable system for creating your own modules
• CMS previewing

Installation

Modulator can be installed via Composer;

composer require touchcast/modulator dev-master

After installing, run a /dev/build to generate the database tables.

Usage

Create a ModularPage page within your Site Tree. Add new modules to the page and populate them as required.

Creating modules

Each module consists of a PHP class and a template file.

Start by extending PageModule

class HeroModule extends PageModule {

  // Give the module a name for use within the CMS
  public static $title = "Hero module";

  // Give it a description
  public static $description = "A large title section at the top of the page";

  // Give it a 64x64px icon image
  public static $icon = "mysite/images/module-hero.png";

  // Add any fields required for the module
  private static $db = array(
    "Heading" => "Varchar(128)"
  );

  // Provide custom summary content for the gridfield
  public function getSummaryContent() {
      return $this->Heading;
  }

  // Provide text content from the module to be included in the pages's search index
  public function getSearchBody() {
      return $this->Heading;
  }
}

Next create a template file. It should have the same name as your module class.

<header>
  <h1>$Heading</h1>
</header>

If you want to extend the ModularPage template, you can render the modules by hand using the $ActiveModules loop.

<% loop $ActiveModules %>
<section class="$ClassName.Lowercase <% if $Odd %>odd<% else %>even<% end_if %> order-$Order $ExtraClasses">
  $Content
</section>
<% end_loop %>

Testing

Run phpunit from within the module folder, or /dev/tests from the browser.