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 Ibexa CMS 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 Ibexa CMS 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 Ibexa CMS semantic configuration. If you need to fetch this configuration directly in your code, combine ng_site_api with the specific key name, for example:

ibexa:
    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
Cross-siteaccess Content
Site API Content views
Content View fallback
Internal Content View route on frontend siteaccesses
Configure showing hidden items
Redirections
Named objects
Content Field inconsistencies

Configure handling of URL aliases ¶

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

ibexa:
    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 Ibexa CMS URL aliases, you need to enable it manually per siteaccess.

Cross-siteaccess Content ¶

Cross-siteaccess Content is a feature that enables automatic loading and routing of Content and Locations in the same Repository, but across different siteaccesses. It’s intended for single Repository multisite installations, where single Repository contains Content intended for different siteaccesses. Typically, such siteaccesses are configured with different Content tree root Location IDs. The feature is implemented at the PHP API and Symfony Router level, and it will work automatically when enabled (true by default) without requiring special considerations from the developer, both from PHP and Twig.

However, several caveats apply:

Caution

Search is not affected by Cross-siteaccess Content feature. The way search is implemented makes possible to find Content and Locations only for one language configuration, of a single (current) siteaccess. Out of the box, it’s possible to safely fetch such Content only by loading it directly or by creating a relation to it.

You can still search across the whole Repository, but, out of the box, doing that will not take into account the matching siteaccess language configuration of a specific Content item, or whether such Content item can be rendered or linked on a current siteaccess. Trying to take care of that post-search execution would only create inconsistencies in the result set.

The above means you can use search across siteaccesses, but if doing that it’s best to ensure that all siteaccesses share the same language configuration.

Caution

No provisions are made out of the box for rendering Content from a different siteaccess. This is possible if you take care of configuring the view to render such Content on a current siteaccess, but otherwise, out of the box, such Content will only be safe for linking.

Cross-siteaccess Content is enabled by default, but if needed, it can be disabled per siteaccess with ng_site_api.cross_siteaccess_content.enabled configuration option:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: false

Or as a shortcut configuration:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content: false

Note

An abstract class for implementing a custom siteaccess resolver is provided, which means you can implement and configure your own resolver if the provided one does not match your use case.

Matching process¶

The logic for resolving the best matching siteaccess considers the following (not in the given order):

Current siteaccess
- Content tree root Location ID
- prioritized languages configuration
- excluded URI prefixes configuration (as “external subtree roots”)
Matching siteaccess
- Content tree root Location ID
- prioritized languages configuration
Location
- Available siteaccesses by the configured Content tree root Location IDs
- Content translations
- Content always available flag

Note

The matching process is described below, but the rules could be dense and it might be hard to understand all the implications right away. You should look into the test cases to better understand the matching logic. They were written to simulate the siteaccess configuration and to be easy to read.

Current siteaccess will always be preferred if it matches the given context, meaning given the Location’s subtree, available translations and always available flag. Otherwise, the siteaccess will be chosen among the siteaccesses that match the given context.

If no siteaccess matches the Location’s subtree, current siteaccess will be used as a fallback.

If Location is under the configured external subtree roots, current siteaccess will be used.

In case when multiple (non-current) siteaccesses match the context, the logic will choose the best matching one according to the current siteaccess configured prioritized languages. The matching logic will respect the order/priority of the configured prioritized languages for both current and potentially matching siteaccess, resulting in the selection of a siteaccess that allows highest possible language of the current siteaccess at a highest possible position in the matching siteaccess. The important thing to note here is that configured prioritized languages take precedence over the available languages of the Location, which means that in some cases, the resulting siteaccess will be the best one regarding the prioritized languages, but not the best one regarding the Location’s main language.

It’s possible that matching a siteaccess by the current siteaccess prioritized languages will produce no result. In that case all siteaccesses matching the context will be checked. By default, the highest positioned match for the Location’s main language will be returned if found. This behavior can be disabled through the prefer_main_language option:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: true
                    prefer_main_language: false

If the main language was not matched or the option was disabled, the highest match for any of the Location’s languages will be returned. If multiple siteaccess match the language configuration equally well, the first one, according to the configured siteaccess list, will be used. At the same time, it’s not defined in what order Location’s languages will be checked, as this is not defined by the Ibexa Content Repository; aside from the main language, there is no information about the language priority of a Content item.

Finally, if none of the above matched the Location’s context, current siteaccess will be returned if it matches Location’s subtree, otherwise, the first other siteaccess matching the Location’s subtree will be returned.

External subtree roots¶

If excluded_uri_prefixes option is used on a siteaccess, it should be separately configured for cross-siteaccess router with the corresponding Location IDs. That is needed because excluded_uri_prefixes is used for matching an URL, and the configured information as such is not usable for generating an URL. Counterparts of the “excluded URI prefixes” for generating cross-siteaccess links are called “external subtree roots”, meaning they are external to tree root of the current siteaccess, and can be configured per siteaccess with external_subtree_roots option. If the Location is found to be under the configured external tree root, the link to it will be generated on the current siteaccess. Example configuration:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: true
                    external_subtree_roots:
                        - 42
                        - 256

If only a single items needs to be configured, you can also use shortcut configuration:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: true
                    external_subtree_roots: 42

Siteaccess and siteaccess group inclusion and exclusion¶

If needed, you can include and exclude siteaccesses and siteaccess groups from the matching process, for example:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: true
                    included_siteaccesses:
                        - sa_a
                        - sa_b
                    included_siteaccess_groups:
                        - group_1
                        - group_2
                    excluded_siteaccesses:
                        - sa_c
                        - sa_d
                    excluded_siteaccess_groups:
                        - group_3
                        - group_4

If only a single items needs to be configured, you can also use shortcut configuration:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: true
                    included_siteaccesses: sa_a
                    included_siteaccess_groups: group_1
                    excluded_siteaccesses: sa_c
                    excluded_siteaccess_groups: group_3

There are several specific rules to have in mind:

In case of ambiguous configuration, the exclusion will always win over the inclusion
Current siteaccess will be implicitly included, but it can be excluded if needed
For inclusion options, an empty array is interpreted as “include everything” instead “include nothing”

Relative and absolute URLs¶

Host part of the resulting URL will always be generated if requested, but otherwise only if necessary, meaning only if it’s different from the current host. This is also valid for path function in Twig, as otherwise it would not be possible to correctly link to a Location on a siteaccess with a different host configuration.

All configuration options¶

All configuration options, showing the defaults:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                cross_siteaccess_content:
                    enabled: false
                    external_subtree_roots: []
                    included_siteaccesses: []
                    included_siteaccess_groups: []
                    excluded_siteaccesses: []
                    excluded_siteaccess_groups: []
                    prefer_main_language: true

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 Ibexa CMS 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 ibexa_content::viewAction controller.

It’s also possible to configure fallback between Site API and Ibexa CMS 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 Ibexa CMS configuration regularly edited

by frontend developers.

For example, if using the following configuration:

ibexa:
    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/ibexa_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 ibexa_content::viewAction would use @App/content/line/ibexa_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 Ibexa CMS views. Fallback can be controlled through two configuration options (showing default values):

ibexa:
    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 Ibexa CMS views, and from Ibexa CMS 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 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 Ibexa CMS views or the opposite.

@NetgenIbexaSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_ibexa/view.html.twig

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

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                line:
                    article:
                        template: '@NetgenIbexaSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_ibexa/view.html.twig'
                        match:
                            Identifier\ContentType: article

@NetgenIbexaSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_site_api/view.html.twig

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

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            content_view:
                full:
                    catch_all:
                        template: '@NetgenIbexaSiteApi/content_view_fallback/to_site_api/view.html.twig'
                        match: ~

Internal Content View route on frontend siteaccesses ¶

Ibexa 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:

ibexa:
    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):

ibexa:
    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. Redirections have their own semantic configuration under redirect key in configuration for a particular Content view. Available parameters and their default values are:

target - identifies the redirect target

Redirect target can be a Content, Location or a Tag object, a Symfony route, or a full URL.
target_parameters: [] - Symfony route parameters used when the target is a Symfony route
permanent: false - whether the redirect will be permanent or temporary (301 or 302)
keep_request_method: false - whether to keep the request method

If enabled, this will result in 308 for a permanent and 307 for a temporary redirect.
absolute: false - whether the generated URL will be absolute or relative

Parameter expressions¶

When defining parameters it’s possible to use expressions. These are evaluated by Symfony’s Expression Language component, whose syntax is based on Twig and is documented here.

Expression strings are recognized by @= prefix. Following sections describe available objects, services and functions.

Content and Location objects¶

Site API Content object is available as content. For example you could redirect to the main Location of the related Content through the internal_redirect field:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=content.getFieldRelation("internal_redirect")'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

Site API Location object is available as location. In the following example we use it to redirect to the parent Location:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=location.parent'
                        permanent: true
                        keep_request_method: false
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

Configuration¶

Ibexa ConfigResolver service is available as configResolver. Through it you can access dynamic (per siteaccess) configuration, for example:

ngsite.eng.redirect: https://netgen.io
ngsite.jpn.redirect: some_symfony_route

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=configResolver.getParameter("redirect", "ngsite")'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

Function config(name, namespace = null, scope = null) is a shortcut to getParameter() method of ConfigResolver service:

ngsite.eng.redirect: https://netgen.io
ngsite.jpn.redirect: some_symfony_route

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=config("redirect", "ngsite")'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

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. Site API NamedObjectProvider service is available as namedObject. Its purpose is providing access to configured named objects.

Note

Configuration of named objects is documented in more detail below.

The following example shows how to configure redirect to a homepage named Location:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    locations:
                        homepage: 2

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=namedObject.getLocation("homepage")'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

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.

With the shortcut functions, the example from the above can be written as:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                container:
                    redirect:
                        target: '@=namedLocation("homepage")'
                    match:
                        Identifier\ContentType: container

Container parameters¶

Access to the container parameters is possible both by using the parameter directly, or by using it through the parameter function, which also enables negating a boolean parameter value:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_content_view:
                match_all:
                    redirect:
                        target: 'login'
                        target_parameters:
                            foo: '@=config("bar")'
                        permanent: '@=!parameter("kernel.debug")'
                        keep_request_method: '%kernel.debug%'
                    match: ~

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:

ibexa:
    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). Hence, these two types of IDs are distinguished by their respective value type.

Configuring IDs through expressions¶

When defining parameters it’s possible to use expressions. These are evaluated by Symfony’s Expression Language component, whose syntax is based on Twig and is documented here.

Expression strings are recognized by @= prefix. Following sections describe available objects, services and functions.

Configuration¶

Ibexa ConfigResolver service is available as configResolver. Through it you can access dynamic (per siteaccess) configuration, for example the location tree root:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    locations:
                        homepage: '@=configResolver.getParameter("content.tree_root.location_id")'

Function config(name, namespace = null, scope = null) is a shortcut to getParameter() method of ConfigResolver service:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    locations:
                        homepage: '@=config("content.tree_root.location_id")'

Current user ID¶

Repository’s current user ID is available as currentUserId variable:

ibexa:
    system:
        frontend_group:
            ng_site_api:
                named_objects:
                    locations:
                        current_user: '@=currentUserId'

Accessing named objects¶

access from PHP is documented on the Services page
access from Twig is documented on Templating page
access from Query Type configuration is documented on Query Types page

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:

ibexa:
    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.