Configuration

Site API has its own view configuration, available under ng_content_view key. Aside from Query Type configuration that is 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.

All other configuration is grouped under ng_site_api key under eZ Platform semantic configuration. If you need to fetch this configuration directly in your code, combine ng_site_api with the specific key name, for example:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                site_api_is_primary_content_view: true
$configResolver->get('ng_site_api.site_api_is_primary_content_view');

Content on this page:

Configure handling of URL aliases

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:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                site_api_is_primary_content_view: 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 a siteaccess that can’t use it, for example a custom admin or intranet interface.

Note

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

Site API Content views

Once you enable site_api_is_primary_content_view for a siteaccess, 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 ng_content_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 directly rendering either ng_content::viewAction or ez_content::viewAction controller.

It’s also possible to configure fallback between Site API and eZ Platform views. With it, if the rule is not matched in one view configuration, the fallback mechanism will try to match it in the other. Find out more about that in the following section.

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:
            ng_content_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.

Content View fallback

You can configure fallback between Site API and eZ Platform views. Fallback can be controlled through two configuration options (showing default values):

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                fallback_to_secondary_content_view: true
                fallback_without_subrequest: true
  • fallback_to_secondary_content_view

    With this option you control whether automatic fallback will be used. By default, automatic fallback is disabled. Secondary content view means the fallback can be used both from Site API to eZ Platform views, and from eZ Platform to Site API content views. Which one will be used is defined by site_api_is_primary_content_view configuration documented above.

  • fallback_without_subrequest

    With this option you can control whether the fallback will use a subrequest (default), or Twig functions that can render content view without a subrequest. That applies both to automatic and manually configured fallback. Rendering views without a subrequest is faster in debug mode, where profiling is turned on. Depending on the number of views used on a page, performance improvement when not using subrequest can be significant.

Warning

Because of reverse siteaccess matching limitations, when ng_fallback_without_subrequest is turned off, links in the preview in the admin UI will not be correctly generated. To work around that problem, turn the option on.

Note

When fallback is enabled default templates for the primary view will not be used. Otherwise the fallback would never happen, because the primary view would always use the default templates instead of falling back to the secondary view. Similarly, when falling back to the secondary view, if its view configuration doesn’t match, the default template of the secondary view will be rendered.

You can also configure fallback manually, per view. This is done by configuring a view to render one of two special templates, depending if the fallback is from Site API to eZ Platform views or the opposite.

  • @NetgenEzPlatformSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_ez_platform.html.twig

    This template is used for fallback from Site API to eZ Platform views. In the following example it’s used to configure fallback for line view of article ContentType:

    ezpublish:
        system:
            frontend_group:
                ng_content_view:
                    line:
                        article:
                            template: '@NetgenEzPlatformSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_ez_platform.html.twig'
                            match:
                                Identifier\ContentType: article
    
  • @NetgenEzPlatformSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_site_api.html.twig

    This template is used for fallback from eZ Platform to Site API views. In the following example it’s used to configure fallback for all full views:

    ezpublish:
        system:
            frontend_group:
                content_view:
                    full:
                        catch_all:
                            template: '@NetgenEzPlatformSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_site_api.html.twig'
                            match: ~
    

Internal Content View route on frontend siteaccesses

eZ Platform allows use of internal Content View route from the admin UI on the frontend siteaccesses. That might not be desirable in all cases, so Site API provides two configuration options to control whether the internal route will be enabled on a frontend siteaccess and, if enabled, whether it will permanently (HTTP code 308) redirect to the URL alias.

By default, both options are set to true and the route will be enabled and it will permanently redirect to the URL alias:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                enable_internal_view_route: true
                redirect_internal_view_route_to_url_alias: true

Configure showing hidden items

You can configure whether hidden Content and Location objects will be shown by default through show_hidden_items configuration option (false by default):

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                show_hidden_items: false

This affects loading Location’s children and siblings, Content’s relations and search through Query Types. In Query Types you can override the configured option by explicitly defining visible condition, see the Query Type documentation for more details.

Redirections

With Site API, it’s also possible to configure redirects directly from the view configuration. You can set up temporary or permanent redirect to either Content, Location, Tag, Symfony route or any full url.

For the target configuration you can use expression language, meaning it is easily possible to redirect, for example, to the parent of the current location, or to the named object.

Example configuration:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: "@=location.parent"
                        target_parameters:
                            foo: bar
                        permanent: false
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container
                article:
                    redirect:
                        target: "@=namedObject.getLocation('homepage')"
                        target_parameters:
                            foo: bar
                            siteaccess: cro
                        permanent: true
                        absolute: true
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: article
                category:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=location.getChildren(1)[0]'
                        permanent: true
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: category
                news:
                    redirect:
                        target: 'login'
                        target_parameters:
                            foo: bar
                        permanent: false
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: news
                blog:
                    redirect:
                        target: 'https://netgen.io'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: blog

There also shortcuts available for simplified configuration:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    temporary_redirect: "@=namedObject.getTag('running')"
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container
                category:
                    permanent_redirect: "@=content.getFieldRelation('internal_redirect')"
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

Note

Configuration of named objects is documented in more detail below.

Shortcut functions are available for accessing each type of named object directly:

  • namedContent(name)

    Provides access to named Content.

  • namedLocation(name)

    Provides access to named Location.

  • namedTag(name)

    Provides access to named Tag.

Named objects

Named objects feature provides a way to configure specific objects (Content, Location and Tag) by name and ID, and a way to access them by name from PHP, Twig and Query Type configuration.

Example configuration:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    content:
                        certificate: 42
                        site_info: 'abc123'
                    locations:
                        homepage: 2
                        articles: 'zxc456'
                    tags:
                        categories: 24
                        colors: 'bnm789'

From the example, certificate and site_info are names of Content objects, homepage and articles are names of Location objects and categories and colors are names of Tag objects. The example also shows it’s possible to use both a normal ID (integer) or remote ID (string). In fact, it shows a short syntax, where the type of ID is inferred from the type, while full syntax equivalent to the above would be:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    content:
                        certificate:
                            id: 42
                        site_info:
                            remote_id: 'abc123'
                    locations:
                        homepage:
                            id: 2
                        articles:
                            remote_id: 'zxc456'
                    tags:
                        categories:
                            id: 24
                        colors:
                            remote_id: 'bnm789'

Accessing named objects

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:

ezpublish:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                fail_on_missing_field: true
                render_missing_field_info: false

By default fail_on_missing_field 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 its value is false, meaning it will render as an empty string. That behavior is also what you should use in the production environment. Setting this option to true can be useful in debug mode, together with setting fail_on_missing_field to false, as that will provide a visual cue about the missing field without the page crashing and without the need to go into the web debug toolbar to find the logged message.

Note

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