Neos Node Templates

When using Neos CMS as an editor, you often work with nested node structures that have to be created manually. This packages aims at easing the editing workflow by automatically creating helpful child nodes and making useful modifications to node properties when creating new nodes in the Neos UI.

In contrast to child nodes that are defined in the regular node type definition (they cannot be removed by the editor), all modifications that are made when a template is applied can be changed or removed by the editor.

The desired node structure is defined in a declarative way in the NodeTypes.yaml under the path "options.template".

Please note that the node templates package only works when using the new React UI.

TL;DR

1. composer require flowpack/nodetemplates
2. Add templates to your nodetypes configuration in NodeTypes.yaml, as described in the examples below
3. Use the new React UI

Hello world

The following example will add a text child node with the content "Hello World" to the main content collection of all pages that are created via the UI:

'Neos.NodeTypes:Page':
  options:
    template:
      childNodes:
        mainContentCollection:
          name: 'main'
          childNodes:
            helloWorldTextNode:
              type: 'Neos.NodeTypes:Text'
              properties:
                text: '<p>Hello world!</p>'

Using the node creation dialog

The Neos React UI comes with a configurable node creation dialog. You can access the data entered in the node creation dialog in your node templates using EEL queries. You could let the editor choose between different dummy texts like this:

'Neos.NodeTypes:Page':
  ui:
    creationDialog:
      elements:
        dummyText:
          type: string
          ui:
            label: 'Dummy text'
            editor: 'Neos.Neos/Inspector/Editors/SelectBoxEditor'
            editorOptions:
              values:
                'Hello world':
                  label: 'Hello world'
                'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.':
                  label: 'Lorem ipsum'
  options:
    template:
      childNodes:
        mainContentCollection:
          name: 'main'
          childNodes:
            helloWorldTextNode:
              type: 'Neos.NodeTypes:Text'
              properties:
                text: '${"<p>" + data.dummyText + "</p>"}'

Conditions and loops

Conditions

If you want to apply a template only under some conditions, you can use the when configuration key. It can be used in the main node template or in any child node template.

The following example hides a newly created node if the title entered in the node creation dialog contains the string "dummy":

'Neos.NodeTypes:Page':
  options:
    template:
      properties:
        _hidden: true
      when: '${String.indexOf(String.toLowerCase(data.title), "dummy") >= 0}'

As a when condition that evaluates to false prevents the whole template (and all child templates) from being applied, its most common use case is conditional child node creation.

Loops

Loops can be used to create multiple child nodes. You can use withItems to define the items of the loop. When using EEL, be sure to return an array. The current item is available in EEL expressions as the item context variable.

The following example creates three different text child nodes in the main content collection:

'Neos.NodeTypes:Page':
  options:
    template:
      childNodes:
        mainContentCollection:
          name: 'main'
          childNodes:
            multipleTextNodes:
              type: 'Neos.NodeTypes:Text'
              properties:
                text: '${"<p>" + item + "</p>"}'
              withItems:
                - 'Hello world'
                - 'Different text'
                - 'Yet another text'

We call conditions when and loops withItems (instead of if and forEach), because it inspires a more declarative mood. The naming is inspired by Ansible.

EEL context variables

There are several variables available in the EEL context that allow for accessing node data, for example.

Variable name	Description	Availability
data	Data from the node creation dialog	Global (if data exists)
triggeringNode	The main node whose creation triggered template processing	Global
node	The current node that has been created (equals triggeringNode for the outermost template)	Global
parentNode	The parentNode of the current node	Child nodes
item	The current item inside a withItems loop	Inside withItems loop
key	The current key inside a withItems loop	Inside withItems loop

Node creation depth

The node creation depth can be configured via Settings.yaml with nodeCreationDepth, defaults to 10.

Flowpack:
  NodeTemplates:
    nodeCreationDepth: 10

More examples

For more examples have a look at the node templates demo package:

https://github.com/mindscreen/neos-nodetemplates-demo