Building Reusable Template Components
Templating System
: Developer Guide
: User Guide
Most page layouts can be separated into smaller components, many
of which may appear in different contexts throughout a site.
Examples include:
- A box or section of the page listing contextual links related
to the contents of the page.
- A list of comments on the contents of the page.
- A search box, user poll, or other small embedded form.
- Reports and other administrative pages, where the employee may
wish to assemble multiple panels of information on a single
page.
- Many popular portal sites allow users to customize their home
pages by choosing and arranging a set of small layout components
within a table grid.
The templating system makes it easy to build reusable
components for any of the above scenarios. The basic process is
to build a container template, which delineates the skeletal layout
of the page. Component templates may then be placed in the
container template with the include tag. The container
may pass arguments to the components as needed for personalization
or any other purpose.