Templating system in FrontPage

Background

In FrontPage, every context is associated with a template. The template defines:

in the module administration, the areas where the FrontPage blocks can be inserted, and their visual appearance
the display of the selected blocks in the user interface

Template structure

A template is encapsulated in a directory situated in "templates/<lang>/user". The template description is contained in the file frontpage.info.php in this directory. This php file contains the definition in a hash format:

$info = array(	The description array must be named $info
'name' => 'Template'	The name of the template
'pages' => array(	The pages defined in this template. Each context is in fact an instance of a page. Having multiple pages in a template allows for pages that are conceptually linked (for example, the index and the detail pages) to be kept in the same place.
array(	Each page is described in it's own hash record
'name' => 'The main page',	The name of the page
'id' => 'index',	An unique id
'template' => 'index.html',	Which template will be used for display
'admin'=>'index-admin.html',	Which template is used in the administration interface
'thumb'=>'index-thumb.png',	A thumbnail version which will allow the admin a glance at how his page will look like
'boxes' => array(	The boxes that the admin can fill with the FrontPage blocks.
'center', 'right',	This array contains the ids of the blocks.
),
)
)

Functioning

The FrontPage functions responsible for handling the templates are:

FrontPage_userapi_getAllContextTemplates

Retrieves all available templates

FrontPage_userapi_getContextTemplateInfo

Retrieves a template information

When a context is defined as being the implementation of a template page, the following actions take place:

When the admin visits the context edition interface, the administration template is loaded, and the boxes defined in this template are used.
The admin fills out the boxes with the contents present in FrontPage
The main template is then used to display the selected contents to the user

Administration template requirements

There are a few rules to follow when creating the administration template:

for every box defined in the "boxes" array, there must be a <div> with the id "box_$box_name".
each box must present the contents in $entries, that have the $entry.box property set to the index of the box (0 for the first one, 1 for the second, etc.)
each of the entries must be presented inside a <li> element, with the id $entry.iid
each of the entries must have the following sub-elements:
- <span class="rm-handle"> (the "delete" area)
- <div class="etop-bar"> (the "drag" area)
each of the entries should have a visual representation of $entry.lead or, if this property is not present, of $entry.text and $entry.title

Presentation template requirements

The entries are passed in this template in the $entries array. Some of the most important properties of the entries:

$entry.box – in which box the content must be displayed (numeric index)
$entry.srctype – the type of the content. Currently, one of:
- html - HTML content
- pi_com - Presseinfo communicate
- pi_rev - Presseinfo press review
- np - Newspaper article
- pc - procontent news
- pct - proclassified news
$entry.title – the title of the content
$entry.text – the text of the content