CTools Style PluginDemo & Code Walk-Through

Amber HimesIRC/d.o: agentolivia | Twitter: @amberhimes

What is CTools?

• CTools = Chaos Tool Suite

• A contrib project on drupal.org

• Developer APIs and Tools

• Page Manager

• drupal.org/project/ctools

What is a CTools plugin?

• A plugin is way for a module to allow another module or theme to implement a piece of functionality

• Useful when you want to add or alter existing features of a module.

• Types of plugins include contexts, content types, layouts, and style

Style Plugins

• With a Style Plugin, define:

• a settings form

• how to render settings in a template

Where do I use it?

• In the Panels interface, click on gear of pane and select “Style”

• In Panelizer or Panopoly, click the Paintbrush icon

Panopoly Example

Demo

• Weber County Library in Ogden, UT

• Panopoly distro, Panels IPE (In-Place Editor)

• Live Preview of panel pane styles

Overview of steps

• Create a custom module

• Tell CTools about our plugin files

• Define our $plugin array

• Define our theme and form hooks

• Create our template file and make use of returned values

My Module Files

...explained

My Module Files

weber_styles.moduleImplements hook_ctools_plugin_directory

1 <?php2 function weber_styles_ctools_plugin_directory($module, $plugin) {3 return 'plugins/' . $plugin;4 }

$plugin gotchas

• Define $plugin array inside our .inc but outside any function

• CTools knows to look for $plugin because we told it to in: hook_ctools_plugin_directory()

$plugin array

Follow along...

https://gist.github.com/agentolivia/5745929

=> http://tinyurl.com/ctools-style-gist <=

‘render pane’

• corresponds to the theme function that renders the pane, without “theme_”

• If the theme function is named theme_panesandblocks_render_pane then the value for ‘render pane’ is ‘panesandblocks_render_pane’

‘render pane’

‘region pane’

• corresponds to the theme function that renders the region, without “theme_”

• If the theme function is named theme_panesandblocks_render_region then the value for ‘render region’ is ‘panesandblocks_render_region’

‘pane settings form’

• The full name of the function that returns the settings form. For example: panesandblocks_settings_form

• The corresponding function: function panesandblocks_settings_form ($style_settings)

• Use Form API to build form components. Set default values using $style_settings

‘hook theme’

• Defines theme functions and variables for pane and region

• Pane and Region will each have their own arrays of hook theme information

• Array key = the first parameter of theme() returned in the corresponding theme_ function

hook theme

key

hook theme variables

render pane theme fxn1 function theme_panesandblocks_render_pane($vars){

2 $settings = $vars['settings'];3 $content = $vars['content'];4 5 return theme('panesandblocks_theme_pane', array('content' => $content, 6 'settings' => $settings));7 }

vars in template files

• Whatever variables I listed in $plugin’s ‘hook theme’ are passed into the theme function which make these values available in my template files

• $content and $settings seem to be the two preferred choices for variables in hook theme

vars gotchas

• $settings is an array

• $content is an object

tpl vars gotchas

• $settings is an array

• i.e. $settings[‘heading_classes’]

• $content is an object

• i.e. $content->title

use of vars in tpl1 <?php if (isset($content->title)): ?>

2 <h3 class="<?php print (isset($settings['heading_classes'])) ? $settings['heading_classes'] : ''; ?>">

<?php print $content->title; ?></h3>

3 <?php endif; ?>

build settings form

Print values from settings form in tpl.php

• Use php print statements to output settings form values as CSS classes in your pane template file

$settings in .tpl.php

Apply CSS

• No need to bury a CSS file in a plugin directory

• Do inspect the elements to make sure classes have been applied as expected

Inspect!

Troubleshooting tips

• Add a css file through drupal_add_css at the top of your template file to get the preview working right away

• Check all instances of panel panes to make sure they are rendering correctly, as this template file will override the panels-pane.tpl.php.

• Add logic to theme function as needed

Questions?

• Slides: http://tinyurl.com/ctools-style

• Code: http://tinyurl.com/ctools-style-gist

• Twitter: @amberhimes

• IRC/drupal.org agentolivia