sympal a cmf based on symfony

Sympal - a CMS based on Symfony

Jonathan H. Wage: Sympal a CMS Based on Symfony 1

SympalContent Management System Based on Symfony



Sympal is a Content Management System built on top of Symfony and Doctrine.

It is an evolution of many smaller CMS systems used in projects over the years.



• Collection of Symfony plugins– sfSympalPlugin

• sfFeed2Plugin• sfFormExtraPlugin• sfSuperCachePlugin• sfSympalMenuPlugin• sfSympalPagesPlugin• sfSympalPluginManagerPlugin• sfSympalUserPlugin• sfTaskExtraPlugin• sfWebBrowserPlugin



The Idea



• The idea spawned from a need• Custom functionality in Symfony is

easy• Standard CMS functionality is not

so easy



• A project with 75% custom functionality and 25% CMS functionality.

• The 75% custom is no problem• But what about that 25%?• It sometimes ends up taking more time

than the 75% custom!• We repeat ourselves a lot when it

comes to CMS functionality



So the idea is to provide what something like Drupal gives you with a powerful MVC

framework and ORM under the hood.



The name Sympal was coined by my friend and ex co-worker Josh Reynolds a few

years ago while brainstorming. Sympal was born that day and I began recording notes

and collecting code from old projects.

Symfony + Drupal = Sympal



The code has existed in my own private repositories for a long time but not until the last few months have I started to formalize

it in to a working product and made it available to the public



Highlights



• CLI or web installation• Menus• Breadcrumbs• Content types• Inline or backend content editing• Content slots• Plugin manager - Download/Install/Uninstall Sympal

plugins from the CLI or web browser.• Configuration controlled via YAML or a web form• Security - users, groups and permissions



• Events• Sending E-Mail• Multiple Sites• Multiple Themes/Layouts• Internationalized URLs• Map menus to content• Change url of content without breaking old urls• SEO• Logged in user Dashboard• Uses YUI for JS framework



Installation



• Install from your browser• Or from the command line• Use in new or existing projects



Install from your browser



• Install from the command line

• Interactive option prompts you for the same information as the browser installation

• Omit --interactive and default values will be used

$ php symfony sympal:install --interactive



Once installed you will see the default Sympal website.



Menus



• Only requires one query• Multiple menus• Sub-menus• No matter how large or how

complex they only ever require one query.

• Menus can optionally be cached for 0 queries.



YUI tree view for managing menus



Drag and drop ordering



Right click a menu leaf to manage



Rendering menus is done with a Symfony helper

// returns instance of sfSympalMenuSite which extends sfSympalMenu$menu = get_sympal_menu('footer');

// sfSympalMenu implements __toString() which invokes renderingecho $menu;



Use custom menu class

class myMenuClass extends sfSympalMenuSite{ }

echo get_sympal_menu('footer', true, 'myMenuClass');



• Specify global custom menu class in configuration

• Now all your menus use that class

all: sympal_config: menu_class: myMenuClass



• Core of menu system is database agnostic

• sfSympalMenu implements the basic menu functionality

• sfSympalMenuSite extends sfSympalMenu and implements the binding to the Doctrine MenuItem model



Using sfSympalMenu standalone$menu = new sfSympalMenu('My Test Menu');

$menu->addChild('Google', 'http://www.google.com');

$sensio = $menu->addChild('Sensio', 'http://www.sensio.com');$sensio->addChild('Sensio Labs', 'http://www.sensiolabs.com');$sensio->addChild('The Symfony MVC Framework', 'http://www.symfony-project.com');$sensio->addChild('The Symfony Components', 'http://components.symfony-project.org');$sensio->addChild('The Doctrine ORM', 'http://www.doctrine-project.org');

$menu->addChild('Yahoo', 'http://www.yahoo.com');

echo $menu;

http://www.google.com

http://www.google.com

http://www.sensio.com

http://www.sensio.com

http://www.sensiolabs.com

http://www.sensiolabs.com

http://www.symfony-project.com

http://www.symfony-project.com

http://components.symfony-project.org




http://www.doctrine-project.org

http://www.doctrine-project.org

http://www.yahoo.com

http://www.yahoo.com



• Serves multiple purposes– Breadcrumbs– Admin bar menu– Floating editor panel

• Building hierarchical structure through OO interface

• Rendering HTML for the hierarchy



• Connect to events to alter these objects before they are rendered

• Sympal plugins can add items to the admin bar, menus, floating editor panel, etc.

• Install a Sympal plugin and the functionality appears in your site and is instantly available.



• The rendering of menus are done through these functions which can be overridden and customized.– render()– renderChild()– renderChildBody()– renderLink()– renderLabel()

• Rendering is split in to multiple methods to allow you to override only the pieces you need to change.



• Admin bar rendering is customized with sfSympalMenuAdminBar class

• Overrides renderChild() method so that the proper HTML is generated for YUI to work



Breadcrumbs



• Breadcrumbs don’t require any additional queries

• Generated from the same information used for menus

• Also generated with special child class of sfSympalMenuSite named sfSympalMenuBreadcrumbs



Rendering breadcrumbs are done with a Symfony helper, similar to the menus

// Get the current menu item to render breadcrumbs for// Or render breadcrumbs for any Doctrine MenuItem instance$menuItem = sfSympalToolkit::getCurrentMenuItem();

// Returns instance of sfSympalMenuBreadcrumbs$breadcrumbs = get_sympal_breadcrumbs($menuItem);

echo $breadcrumbs;



Content Types



• Sympal comes bundled with two content types– Page - Simple title and body– ContentList - Content type which allows you to specify

information to render a list of another type of content.• Specify the query• Sorting• Limit• Conditions of list, etc.• What template to render the list with



• Easily add new content types through Sympal plugins

• Generate a new Sympal plugin that contains the skeleton for a new content type which can be installed



Generate the new Sympal plugin$ php symfony sympal:plugin-generate Article --content-type=Article

sfSympalArticlePlugin/ config/ doctrine/ schema.yml routing.yml sfSympalArticlePluginConfiguration.class.php data/ fixtures/ install.yml lib/ LICENSE package.xml.tmpl README



• Inspect the generated plugin• Have a look at the default

schema.yml created---Article: actAs: [sfSympalContentType] columns: title: string(255) body: clob



• Now we can install the generated plugin

• Installation does the following– Generates models, forms, etc. for schema– Creates tables in the database– Adds a sample content list for content type– Adds a sample content record for content type– Adds a menu item to the primary menu which is

mapped to the content list for the new content type

$ php symfony sympal:plugin-install Article



When we go to add new content we can now add Articles



We can click the menu item added to the primary menu to view the list of articles.



Click the sample article to view it



• Rendering of content types utilizes Content Templates

• Use different templates to render different content types

• Use different templates to render individual content records

• By default it just uses some basic templates



Inline Editing



Sympal allows you to edit your content inline when logged in as an authorized content editor.



When you double click some content to edit the inline editor will come up



Edit model columns inline in addition to content slots



Plugin Manager



• Download, install and uninstall plugins• Works from the CLI or web browser• Sympal plugin manager tries to get a

plugin through the symfony plugin:install task first then tries to find the plugin in SVN and check it out



From the command line



From the web browser



Configuration



Controlled via YAML

all: sympal_config: menu_class: sfSympalMenuSite yui_path: http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build super_admin_signin_url: @sympal_dashboard enable_all_modules: true admin_module_web_dir: /sfSympalPlugin load_default_css: true

http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build

http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build



• Or YAML can be controlled via a web form

• When configuration form is saved the YAML file is written



• Since the configuration uses the symfony app.yml it can be controlled at different levels of symfony– Project– Application– Module



• Other items related to content records can be configured at different levels. For example the layout can be controlled– Globally– Per site– Per content type– Per content record

• This means you can customize the layout an individual content record uses.



Security



• sfSympalUserPlugin is forked version of sfDoctrineGuardPlugin– Users– Groups– Permissions– Forgot Password– Registration

• Menus, content records, etc. can all be locked down with permissions.



List users



Edit users



List groups



Edit group



List permissions



Edit permission



Sympal Admin Generator Theme



• Sympal comes with custom admin generator them

• Tabbed forms for fieldsets and embedded forms



Easily click Filters to popup the filters form



Floating Editor Panel



When logged in as editor and viewing a content record a floating editor panel is displayed



Content Slot Types



• A content slot in Sympal is an arbitrary piece of content and has a type.

• Sympal comes bundled with a few content slot types



• The default slot types offered by Sympal are– Markdown– MultiLineText– RichText– Text

• Add your own custom slot types for your projects



YUI Rich Text Editor



The RichText slot type uses the YUI rich text editor



The YUI rich text editor also implements the ability to upload and embed images inline



Sending E-Mails



• A reoccurring need• Re-implementing the functionality

over and over wasting time• We need a standard way to send

and manage our e-mail templates• Sympal offers a solution



In your actions you can easily create new e-mails and send them

class my_moduleActions extends sfActions{ public function executeSome_action(sfWebRequest $request) { $variables = array( 'name' => 'Jonathan H. Wage' ); $email = $this->newEmail('email_module/test', $variables); $email->send('[email protected]'); }}

mailto:[email protected]




• The templates used for a Sympal e-mail are just a partial or component

• In the previous example we use a partial named _test.php

Hello <?php echo $name ?>,This is a test e-mail that we are sending to <?php echo $name ?>



• The first line of the template is the subject

• The second line and after is the body of the e-mail

• This way the contents of the e-mail(subject and body) are managed in one place



• The newEmail() method returns an instance of sfSympalMail

• sfSympalMail is a wrapper around your mail sending program which defaults to Swift in Sympal



Multiple Sites



• Sympal can handle multiple sites

• A sympal site is directly bound to a symfony application

• This is how Sympal knows which site you are in and can limit the data to only that site



Search Engine Optimization



• SEO capabilities are built in• You can specify global title,

keywords and description for your project.

• They can also be overridden by each site or even by individual content records



• sfSympalAutoSEOPlugin– Who is going to write it? :)– Automatically generate SEO for content

records from the final rendered HTML• Parse the first <h1> tag value for the meta title• Build a list of top words used in the content

record for the meta keywords• Parse the first <p> tag value for the meta

description– Write good content and you’ll have SEO



Dashboard



When a user logs in and has some credentials he’ll be forwarded to his dashboard. A super administrator would see everything. Something like the below...



• Dashboard is generated using the sfSympalMenu classes

• The menu instance used to generate the dashboard is passed through an event so you can easily add to it by connecting to an event



Connect to dashboard event and add to the menu object

class sfSympalTestPluginConfiguration extends sfPluginConfiguration{ public function initialize() { $this->dispatcher->connect('sympal.load_dashboard_boxes', array($this, 'loadDashboardBoxes') ); }

public function loadDashboardBoxes(sfEvent $event) { $menu = $event['menu']; $menu->addChild('My New Box', '@route_name'); }}



Multiple Themes



• Sympal offers the ability to have themes and you can configure in multiple places what them to use– Globally– Per site– Per content type– Or per content record



• We can now easily have Sympal theme plugins that you can download and instantly have a new theme to change to

• We already have three themes available that you can download and use– sfSympalPlugin - The default theme included with

Sympal– sfSympalJwageThemePlugin - The theme used on my

personal website, jwage.com– sfSympalDoctrineThemePlugin - The theme which

powers the Doctrine website



Doctrine Theme

Sympal Theme



Sympal CLI Tasks



Sympal comes with some other pretty useful tasks for improving your productivity when working in Symfony



• Most notable CLI tasks– sympal:delete-model - Delete a model from your

project. Finds and deletes model, form and filter files all in one command

– sympal:report-statistics - This task will report back to the Symfony Plugins API what all plugins you’re using in your project and will add them to your stack.

– sympal:event-list - Report a list of events that are available for a URL in your application• See who has connected to an event



Show a list of all available events for a URL



Show only the events which have been connected to



Inspect an individual event to see who has connected to it and more importantly where!

sympal a cmf based on symfony

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