Configuration

Site API has it’s own view configuration, available under ngcontent_view key. Aside from Query Type options documented separately, this is exactly the same as eZ Platform’s default view configuration under content_view key. You can use this configuration right after the installation, but note that it won’t be used for full views rendered for eZ Platform URL aliases right away. Until you configure that, it will be used only when calling its controller explicitly with ng_content:viewAction.

To use Site API view rules for pages rendered from eZ Platform URL aliases, you have to enable it for a specific siteaccess with the following semantic configuration:

netgen_ez_platform_site_api:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            override_url_alias_view_action: true

Here frontend_group is the siteaccess group (or a siteaccess) for which you want to activate the Site API. This switch is useful if you have some siteaccesses which can’t use the it, like custom admin or intranet interfaces.

Note

To use Site API view configuration automatically on pages rendered from eZ Platform URL aliases, you need to enable it manually per siteaccess.

One you do this, all your full view templates and controllers will need to use Site API to keep working. They will be resolved from Site API view configuration, available under ngcontent_view key. That means Content and Location variables inside Twig templates will be instances of Site API Content and Location value objects, $view variable passed to your custom controllers will be an instance of Site API ContentView variable, and so on.

If needed you can still use content_view rules. This will allow you to have both Site API template override rules as well as original eZ Platform template override rules, so you can rewrite your templates bit by bit. You can decide which one to use by calling either ng_content:viewAction or ez_content:viewAction controller.

Tip

View configuration is the only eZ Platform configuration regularly edited

by frontend developers.

For example, if using the following configuration:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ngcontent_view:
                line:
                    article:
                        template: '@App/content/line/article.html.twig'
                        match:
                            Identifier\ContentType: article
            content_view:
                line:
                    article:
                        template: '@App/content/line/ez_article.html.twig'
                        match:
                            Identifier\ContentType: article

Rendering a line view for an article with ng_content:viewAction would use @App/content/line/article.html.twig template, while rendering a line view for an article with ez_content:viewAction would use @App/content/line/ez_article.html.twig template.

It is also possible to use custom controllers, this is documented on Custom controllers reference documentation page.

Handling Content Field inconsistencies

Sometimes when the content model is changed or for any reason the data is not consistent, it can happen that some Content Fields are missing. In case of content model change that is a temporary situation lasting while the data is being updated in the background. But even in the case of inconsistent database, typically you do not want that to result in site crash.

To account for this Site API provides the following semantic configuration:

netgen_ez_platform_site_api:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            fail_on_missing_fields: true
            render_missing_field_info: false

By default fail_on_missing_fields is set to %kernel.debug% container parameter, which means accessing a nonexistent field in dev environment will fail and result in a RuntimeException.

On the other hand, when not in debug mode (in prod environment), the system will not crash, but will instead return a special Surrogate type field, which always evaluates as empty and renders to an empty string. In this case, a critical level message will be logged, so you can find and fix the problem.

Second configuration option render_missing_field_info controls whether Surrogate field will render as an empty string or it will render useful debug information. By default it’s value is false, meaning it will render as an empty string. That behavior is also what you should use in the production environment.

Note

You can configure both render_missing_field_info and fail_on_missing_fields per siteaccess or siteaccess group.