Currently building a system that requires users to design a custom template for a PDF document generated by the application. To achieve this, I have saved a blade template in the database to be retrieved when the document is about to be converted into a PDF document.
I know Laravel's View component can pick up a blade template from the file system and render it as an HTML document. However, to achieve my objective, this component should be able to read a text field fetched from the database. This is not currently possible with Laravel and I suspect is largely due to security reasons.
The question now is, how else can this be achieved using Laravel or what may be the recommended way to get this done?
Based on your comments and re-reading your initial question, my best guess is that you need a macro replacement function. This is the method I use for email templates in my own applications, which are stored in the database. It sounds similar to what you are attempting to do.
Helpers.php
Some autoloaded helpers file.
if (!function_exists('macro_parse')) {
function macro_parse($body, $haystack, $pattern = '/{{([^}]+)}}/')
{
$replace = preg_replace_callback($pattern, function ($needle) use ($haystack) {
return $haystack[$needle[1]];
}, $body);
return $replace;
}
} else {
Log::error("macro_parse is already defined");
}
Usage
// a simple template example...
// you would retrieve this template from the database
$template = '<div>{{some_macro}}</div>';
// key/value pairs can be set from database values
$macros = [
'some_macro' => 'it works!'
];
// parse the template
$parsed = macro_parse($template,$macros);
dd($parsed); // <div>it works!</div>
You can then pass the filled template to the PDF generator.
Related
I need to edit template which used for emails in admin panel. Any Ideas?
I think about several ways:
Save email template in DB in the text field, edit it in the admin panel and then display the text in the blade's view.
The problem of this way's realization is I have to display php variables in blade template and then use the final code as the html for email. I think, it's so difficult for Laravel.
And the additional problem is if I store {{ $var }} in template's text in DB - it will display as the text, blade compiler doesn't process it.
Store only the static text information from email in the DB and then display it in the template. PHP variables will transfer separately.
This way will solve the problem with the php var's display, but I still don't know how to use the final code in the Mail::send, because Laravel allows using the template's name only, not a HTML, as I know...
I think about the following way:
$view = view('template')->render();
mail(..., $view, ...);
But I don't want to use it because I want use Mail::queue() for querying emails and I don't know how to use it with PHP mail().
Thanks to everybody for replies.
You can create your own variable syntax and store email template as text in your DB. Foe example, you can store each variable as ${VARIABLE_KEY} string.
Then during email preparation you should resolve all such constructions into their real values. I don't know which variables are required, but during email preparation you should execute these steps:
Load email template from DB.
Replace all ${VARIABLE_KEY} with their real values.
You can use regular expressions for the searching and replacement, but also you can use functions such str_replace. For example, if you want to paste email of the current user into your email (and your table for model User has an email field), then you can create variable: ${user.name} and then replace this manually with simple str_replace function:
$variables['${user.name}'] = Auth::user()->email;
str_replace(array_keys($variables), array_values($variables), $yourEmailTemplateBody);
Also you can do replacements by the same method not only in the email template body, but in the email subject too.
Then you have to create your own class which extends Laravel Illuminate\Mail\Mailable class. In this class you should define build method, where you can use not only the name of the view, but also some additional parameters, like in the "regular" view, for example:
class SomeClassName extends Mailable
{
public function build()
{
$email = $this->view('mail.common', [
'mail_header' => 'some header',
'mail_footer' => 'some footer',
])->subject('Your subject');
...
return $email;
}
For example, in your view you can store layout for entire email with some extra parameters: footer and header as in my example.
Also you can create more complex syntax for ${VARIABLE_NAME} constructions, for example, VARIABLE_NAME can be a method definition in PHP or Laravel notation, i.e.: SomeClass::someStaticMethod. You can detect this case and resolve SomeClass via Laravel Service Container. Also it can be an object.field notation, for example, user.email, where user is the current Auth::user().
But be carefull in this cases: if you will grant ability to edit email templates with this variables for all users, you should filter fields or available methods and classes for calling to prevent executing any method of any available class in your email template or to prevent display private information.
You can read about writing mailables in Laravel documentation
I was doing this for a project yesterday and found a good post describing Alexander's answer in more detail. The core is creating an EmailTemplate model with this method:
public function parse($data)
{
$parsed = preg_replace_callback('/{{(.*?)}}/', function ($matches) use ($data) {
list($shortCode, $index) = $matches;
if( isset($data[$index]) ) {
return $data[$index];
} else {
throw new Exception("Shortcode {$shortCode} not found in template id {$this->id}", 1);
}
}, $this->content);
return $parsed;
}
Example usage:
$template = EmailTemplate::where('name', 'welcome-email')->first();
Mail::send([], [], function($message) use ($template, $user)
{
$data = [
'firstname' => $user->firstname
];
$message->to($user->email, $user->fullname)
->subject($template->subject)
->setBody($template->parse($data));
});
For all the details (db migration, unit test, etc), see the original post at http://tnt.studio/blog/email-templates-from-database
You can simply use this awesome laravel package:
https://github.com/Qoraiche/laravel-mail-editor
Features (from readme file):
Create mailables without using command line.
Preview/Edit all your mailables at a single place.
Templates (more than 20+ ready to use email templates).
WYSIWYG Email HTML/Markdown editor.
I want to save my blade templates to database, because the header and footer of each page is customizable for the user. I want to let my users create the layout themselves and then for each request from a given user, I want to serve the page, using the layout specified by that user.
The necessary variables that are passed by the controller are provided to them in the documentation.
Note: I trust my users. They are all stake-holders of the project and are programmers, so server side code execution is acceptable.
Although this is an old post but just in case someone stumbles across it like I did. I achieved similar while using the Laravel Framework, by saving the view in database such that, whenever I need to display the view, I retrieve it from DB, and load it into a file using the file_put_contents() php function and render it with the view() method. For example;
$blade = DB::table('pages')->where('name', 'index')->first();
file_put_contents('template.blade.php', $blade->view);
//Note if I also need to pass data to the view I can also pass it like so
//$data = ['page_title' => 'Testing Blade Compilation using views Saved in DB'];
// return view(template, $data);
return view('template');
While again in my own case for added security, I created base templates with the blade templating scheme & injected user created inputs into the template after sanitizing the generated input using HTMLPurifier and rendering the view. For example
$view = view('base.template')->render();
//similarly like the above I can load any data into the view like so
//$data = ['page_title' => 'Testing Blade Compilation using views Saved in DB'];
//$view = view('base.template', $data)->render();
$purifier = new HTMLPurifier(HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault());
$with_purified_input = $purifier->purify($user_generated_input);
str_replace('view_variable', $with_purified_input, $view);
return $view;
I realised that I can improve security and caching if I just let them insert the static content only. The only thing I need to change is the main content, so I can just let them set a token where the content is to be placed. As is in the above answer by #huzaib-shafi , I did the following...
//In controller
$content = View::make('final',compact('data'));
$token = "<meta name='_token' content='" . csrf_token() ."'";
$scripts = View::make('final_scripts',compact('data'));
$view = str_replace_first("<%content%>", $content, $templateInDatabase);
$view = str_replace_first("<%token%>", $token, $view);
$view = str_replace_first("<%scripts%>", $scripts, $view);
return $view;
This enforces them to use bootstrap in their template, because I use bootstrap styles in my blade templates, but it is acceptable in my case.
I asked and answered a similar question some days ago. So far as I know, Blade doesn't process view content from database columns. Although you can use compileString() method of View. But you should have a look at the following questions.
Extend Blade Template from Database stored string
Let users create custom blade layouts / store in database
In Laravel 9 you can use blade Facades to render from DB:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade;
return Blade::render('Your Blade Content {{ $parameter1}}', ['parameter1' => 'Name']);
I'm having different languages on my web application.
Now i would like to do write: About us in the mustache file.
but then depending on the language the user has chosen (logic in the view/controller), it should display the correct translation for About us.
The translation would be something i have stored for exactly the words: About us
I have seen another webapplication that does it this way:
{{#lang}}About us{{/lang}}
But I dont understand how this is working? How can the lang() method in the view model grab the data within #lang, "About us" - and then replace it with something else, if exists.
(the procedure grabbing the translation from database or file, that matches "About us" do i not need to know)
I didn't know it is possible to reverse like that, sending the "About us" to the lang() method in view model?
Hope someone can explain and with example. Thanks
This is what I tried, in my view:
public function lang($input)
{
return "test" . $input;
}
But this does not work. (No argument passed to lang() )
I am using Mustache (Kostache) together with PHP in a MVC framework (kohana)
Assuming you have mustache defined as $m the following would add the function lang when the template was being parsed.
The key here is passing the function to mustache when rendering.
$data = new StdClass;
$data->lang = function($text) {
return "Requested lang: $text";
}
$m.render($template, $data);
This template
{{#lang}}About us{{/lang}}
Would become
Requested lang: About us
After alot of headache, very bad google results, here is the correct solution if you use Kostache 2 and Kohana 3.2/3.0 :
SIMPLY, in the Kohana_Kostache class at the factory() method where Mustache_Engine intializes, you add a helper function:
'helpers' => array(
'i18n' => function($text) {
return __($text);
}),
Since I use the Kohana Translation system, I called it i18n and it returns __($text), which is the $text translated if exists.
I'm trying to create my own xml sitemap. Everything is done except for the part that I thought was going to be the easiest. How do you get a list of all the pages on the site? I have a bunch of views in a /site folder and a few others. Is there a way to explicitly request their URLs or perhaps via the controllers?
I do not want to make use of an extension
You can use reflection to iterate through all methods of all your controllers:
Yii::import('application.controllers.*');
$urls = array();
$directory = Yii::getPathOfAlias('application.controllers');
$iterator = new DirectoryIterator($directory);
foreach ($iterator as $fileinfo)
{
if ($fileinfo->isFile() and $fileinfo->getExtension() == 'php')
{
$className = substr($fileinfo->getFilename(), 0, -4); //strip extension
$class = new ReflectionClass($className);
foreach ($class->getMethods(ReflectionMethod::IS_PUBLIC) as $method)
{
$methodName = $method->getName();
//only take methods that begin with 'action', but skip actions() method
if (strpos($methodName, 'action') === 0 and $methodName != 'actions')
{
$controller = lcfirst(substr($className, 0, strrpos($className, 'Controller')));
$action = lcfirst(substr($methodName, 6));
$urls[] = Yii::app()->createAbsoluteUrl("$controller/$action");
}
}
}
}
You need to know what content you want to include in your sitemap.xml, I don't really think you want to include ALL pages in your sitemap.xml, or do you really want to include something like site.com/article/edit/1 ?
That said, you may only want the result from the view action in your controllers. truth is, you need to know what you want to indexed.
Do not think in terms of controllers/actions/views, but rather think of the resources in your system that you want indexed, be them articles, or pages, they are all in your database or stored somehow, so you can list them, and they have a URI that identifies them, getting the URI is a matter of invoking a couple functions.
There are two possiblities -
Case 1:
You are running a static website then you can find all your HTML inside 1 folder - protected/views/site/pages
http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/22/how-to-display-static-pages-in-yii/
Case 2:
Website is dynamic. Tasks such as generating and regenerating Sitemaps can be classified into background tasks.
Running background taks can be achieved by emulating the browser which is possible in linux using - WGET, GET or lynx commands
Or, You can create a CronController as a CConsoleCommand. How to use Commands in YII is shown in link below -
http://tariffstreet.com/yii/2012/04/implementing-cron-jobs-with-yii-and-cconsolecommand/
Sitemap is an XML which lists your site's URL. But it does more than that.
It helps you visualize the structure of a website , you may have
category
subcategories.
While making a useful extension, above points can be kept into consideration before design.
Frameworks like Wordpress provide way to generate categorical sitemap.
So the metadata for each page is stored from before and using that metadata it discovers and group pages.
Solution by Reflection suggested by #Pavle is good and should be the way to go.
Consider there may be partial views and you may or may not want to list them as separate links.
So how much effort you want to put into creating the extension is subject to some of these as well.
You may either ask user to list down all variables in config fie and go from there which is not bad or you have to group pages and list using some techniques like reflection and parsing pages and looking for regex.
For ex - Based on module names you can group them first and controllers inside a module can form sub-group.
One first approach could be to iterate over the view files, but then you have to take into account that in some cases, views are not page destinations, but page sections included in another pages by using CController::renderPartial() method. By exploring CController's Class Reference I came upon the CController::actions() method.
So, I have not found any Yii way to iterate over all the actions of a CController, but I used php to iterate over all the methods of a SiteController in one of my projects and filter them to these with the prefix 'action', which is my action prefix, here's the sample
class SiteController extends Controller{
public function actionTest(){
echo '<h1>Test Page!</h1></p>';
$methods = get_class_methods(get_class($this));
// The action prefix is strlen('action') = 6
$actionPrefix = 'action';
$reversedActionPrefix = strrev($actionPrefix);
$actionPrefixLength = strlen($actionPrefix);
foreach ($methods as $index=>$methodName){
//Always unset actions(), since it is not a controller action itself and it has the prefix 'action'
if ($methodName==='actions') {
unset($methods[$index]);
continue;
}
$reversedMethod = strrev($methodName);
/* if the last 6 characters of the reversed substring === 'noitca',
* it means that $method Name corresponds to a Controller Action,
* otherwise it is an inherited method and must be unset.
*/
if (substr($reversedMethod, -$actionPrefixLength)!==$reversedActionPrefix){
unset($methods[$index]);
} else $methods[$index] = strrev(str_replace($reversedActionPrefix, '', $reversedMethod,$replace=1));
}
echo 'Actions '.CHtml::listBox('methods', NULL, $methods);
}
...
}
And the output I got was..
I'm sure it can be furtherly refined, but this method should work for any of the controllers you have...
So what you have to do is:
For each Controller: Filter out all the not-action methods of the class, using the above method. You can build an associative array like
array(
'controllerName1'=>array(
'action1_1',
'action1_2'),
'controllerName2'=>array(
'action2_1',
'action2_2'),
);
I would add a static method getAllActions() in my SiteController for this.
get_class_methods, get_class, strrev and strlen are all PHP functions.
Based on your question:
1. How do you get a list of all the pages on the site?
Based on Yii's way of module/controller/action/action_params and your need to construct a sitemap for SEO.
It will be difficult to parse automatically to get all the urls as your action params varies indefinitely. Though you could simply get controller/action easily as constructed by
Pavle Predic. The complexity comes along when you have customized (SERF) URL rules meant for SEO.
The next best solution is to have a database of contents and you know how to get each content via url rules, then a cron console job to create all the urls to be saved as sitemap.xml.
Hope this helps!
I'm using CodeIgniter, and will likely use their template library as I want to keep things extremely simple to use. The content for the template variables will come from the database, but I want the business admins to know what content areas are available. Basically the names of the parameters when they choose a specific template. For instance, Joomla uses an extra XML file that defines each area, whereas Wordpress uses comments within a page template to inform the system that the PHP file is a template. I like the Joomla approach because you don't have to parse the PHP file to find the areas, but I like the Wordpress approach because you don't have an extra XML file associated with every template. Are there other approaches that I'm missing?
I think the nicest way would be to add a small hack to the template parser class. The code looks quite readable and clean in system/libraries/Parser.php. You could insert a hook in that class that can be used to keep track of the variables. I don't know, if it works, but here's a snippet:
class CI_Parser {
var $varCallback;
function setVarCallback($callbackFunction) {
$this->varCallback = $callbackFunction;
}
...
function _parse_single(...) {
$callback = $this->varCallback;
$callback($key);
}
...
//Somewhere in your code
function storeVarName($variableName) {
// Persist the variable name wherever you want here
}
$this->parser->setVarCallback('storeVarName');
You could do this directly in the controller:
// in the controller
print_r($data);
$this->load->view("main", $data);
Or a little more rudimentary, but you could pass to the template a PHP array of variables (or an object):
// in the controller
$data = array();
$data["namespace"] = array(
"title" => "My website",
"posts" => array("hi", "something else")
);
$this->load->view("main", $data);
And then in the view, have a flag to print_r the namespace to show all the vars available, so that business admins know exactly what to use.
// in the view
if(isset($namespace["showAllVars"])) print_r($namespace);
One option would be to call token_get_all on the PHP file (only when your business admins are loading it up), and parse the output of that.
The best approach, in my opinion, is to keep the variable definitions in another place (such as a database table, or a separate file). This will help with testing (i.e., a programmer can't just remove a tag and it's gone) and making sure things are still working as you move on with the application development in time.
Another advantage is that your application logic will be independent from the templating engine.
On a side note, if you expect a lot of traffic, you may consider using smarty instead. We have done extensive testing with most of the templating engines around and smarty is the fastest.