Sympal CMS Built on Symfony

Sympal - a CMS based on Symfony

Sympal
Content Management System Based on Symfony

Jonathan H. Wage: Sympal a CMS Based on Symfony 1


Sympal is a Content Management System built
on top of Symfony and Doctrine.

It is an evolution of many smaller CMS systems
used in projects over the years.



• Collection of Symfony plugins
– sfSympalPlugin
• sfFeed2Plugin
• sfFormExtraPlugin
• sfSuperCachePlugin
• sfSympalMenuPlugin
• sfSympalPagesPlugin
• sfSympalPluginManagerPlugin
• sfSympalUserPlugin
• sfTaskExtraPlugin
• sfWebBrowserPlugin



The Idea



• The idea spawned from a need
• Custom functionality in Symfony is
easy
• Standard CMS functionality is not
so easy



• A project with 75% custom functionality
and 25% CMS functionality.
• The 75% custom is no problem
• But what about that 25%?
• It sometimes ends up taking more time
than the 75% custom!
• We repeat ourselves a lot when it
comes to CMS functionality



So the idea is to provide what something
like Drupal gives you with a powerful MVC
framework and ORM under the hood.



The name Sympal was coined by my friend
and ex co-worker Josh Reynolds a few
years ago while brainstorming. Sympal was
born that day and I began recording notes
and collecting code from old projects.

Symfony + Drupal = Sympal



The code has existed in my own private
repositories for a long time but not until the
last few months have I started to formalize
it in to a working product and made it
available to the public



Highlights



• CLI or web installation
• Menus
• Breadcrumbs
• Content types
• Inline or backend content editing
• Content slots
• Plugin manager - Download/Install/Uninstall Sympal
plugins from the CLI or web browser.
• Configuration controlled via YAML or a web form
• Security - users, groups and permissions


• Events
• Sending E-Mail
• Multiple Sites
• Multiple Themes/Layouts
• Internationalized URLs
• Map menus to content
• Change url of content without breaking old urls
• SEO
• Logged in user Dashboard
• Uses YUI for JS framework


Installation



• Install from your browser
• Or from the command line
• Use in new or existing projects



Install from your browser



• Install from the command line
$ php symfony sympal:install --interactive

• Interactive option prompts you for
the same information as the
browser installation
• Omit --interactive and default
values will be used


Once installed you will see the
default Sympal website.



Menus



• Only requires one query
• Multiple menus
• Sub-menus
• No matter how large or how
complex they only ever require one
query.
• Menus can optionally be cached for
0 queries.


YUI tree view for managing menus



Drag and drop ordering



Right click a menu leaf to manage



Rendering menus is done with a
Symfony helper

// returns instance of sfSympalMenuSite which extends sfSympalMenu
$menu = get_sympal_menu('footer');

// sfSympalMenu implements __toString() which invokes rendering
echo $menu;



Use custom menu class

class myMenuClass extends sfSympalMenuSite
{

}

echo get_sympal_menu('footer', true, 'myMenuClass');



• Specify global custom menu class
in configuration

all:
sympal_config:
menu_class: myMenuClass

• Now all your menus use that class


• Core of menu system is database
agnostic
• sfSympalMenu implements the basic
menu functionality
• sfSympalMenuSite extends
sfSympalMenu and implements the
binding to the Doctrine MenuItem
model


Using sfSympalMenu standalone
$menu = new sfSympalMenu('My Test Menu');

$menu->addChild('Google', 'http://www.google.com');

$sensio = $menu->addChild('Sensio', 'http://www.sensio.com');
$sensio->addChild('Sensio Labs', 'http://www.sensiolabs.com');
$sensio->addChild('The Symfony MVC Framework', 'http://www.symfony-project.com');
$sensio->addChild('The Symfony Components', 'http://components.symfony-
project.org');
$sensio->addChild('The Doctrine ORM', 'http://www.doctrine-project.org');

$menu->addChild('Yahoo', 'http://www.yahoo.com');

echo $menu;



• Serves multiple purposes
– Breadcrumbs
– Admin bar menu
– Floating editor panel
• Building hierarchical structure
through OO interface
• Rendering HTML for the hierarchy



• Connect to events to alter these
objects before they are rendered
• Sympal plugins can add items to
the admin bar, menus, floating
editor panel, etc.
• Install a Sympal plugin and the
functionality appears in your site
and is instantly available.


• The rendering of menus are done through these functions
which can be overridden and customized.
– render()
– renderChild()
– renderChildBody()
– renderLink()
– renderLabel()
• Rendering is split in to multiple methods to allow you to
override only the pieces you need to change.



• Admin bar rendering is customized
with sfSympalMenuAdminBar class

• Overrides renderChild() method so
that the proper HTML is generated
for YUI to work



Breadcrumbs



• Breadcrumbs don’t require any
additional queries
• Generated from the same
information used for menus
• Also generated with special child
class of sfSympalMenuSite named
sfSympalMenuBreadcrumbs


Rendering breadcrumbs are done with a Symfony helper,
similar to the menus

// Get the current menu item to render breadcrumbs for
// Or render breadcrumbs for any Doctrine MenuItem instance
$menuItem = sfSympalToolkit::getCurrentMenuItem();

// Returns instance of sfSympalMenuBreadcrumbs
$breadcrumbs = get_sympal_breadcrumbs($menuItem);

echo $breadcrumbs;



Content Types



• Sympal comes bundled with two
content types
– Page - Simple title and body
– ContentList - Content type which allows you to specify
information to render a list of another type of content.
• Specify the query
• Sorting
• Limit
• Conditions of list, etc.
• What template to render the list with


• Easily add new content types
through Sympal plugins
• Generate a new Sympal plugin that
contains the skeleton for a new
content type which can be installed



Generate the new Sympal plugin
$ php symfony sympal:plugin-generate Article --content-type=Article
sfSympalArticlePlugin/

config/

doctrine/

schema.yml

routing.yml

sfSympalArticlePluginConfiguration.class.php

data/

fixtures/

install.yml

lib/

LICENSE

package.xml.tmpl

README



• Inspect the generated plugin
• Have a look at the default
schema.yml created
---
Article:
actAs: [sfSympalContentType]
columns:
title: string(255)
body: clob



• Now we can install the generated plugin
$ php symfony sympal:plugin-install Article

• Installation does the following
– Generates models, forms, etc. for schema
– Creates tables in the database
– Adds a sample content list for content type
– Adds a sample content record for content type
– Adds a menu item to the primary menu which is
mapped to the content list for the new content
type



When we go to add new content we
can now add Articles



We can click the menu item added
to the primary menu to view the list
of articles.



Click the sample article to view it



• Rendering of content types utilizes
Content Templates
• Use different templates to render
different content types
• Use different templates to render
individual content records
• By default it just uses some basic
templates


Inline Editing



Sympal allows you to edit your
content inline when logged in as an
authorized content editor.



When you double click some
content to edit the inline editor will
come up



Edit model columns inline in
addition to content slots



Plugin Manager



• Download, install and uninstall plugins
• Works from the CLI or web browser
• Sympal plugin manager tries to get a
plugin through the symfony
plugin:install task first then tries to find
the plugin in SVN and check it out



From the command line



From the web browser



Configuration



Controlled via YAML

all:
sympal_config:
menu_class: sfSympalMenuSite
yui_path: http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build
super_admin_signin_url: @sympal_dashboard
enable_all_modules: true
admin_module_web_dir: /sfSympalPlugin
load_default_css: true



• Or YAML can be controlled via a
web form
• When configuration form is saved
the YAML file is written



• Since the configuration uses the
symfony app.yml it can be controlled at
different levels of symfony
– Project
– Application
– Module



• Other items related to content records can be
configured at different levels. For example the
layout can be controlled
– Globally
– Per site
– Per content type
– Per content record
• This means you can customize the layout an
individual content record uses.



Security



• sfSympalUserPlugin is forked version of
sfDoctrineGuardPlugin
– Users
– Groups
– Permissions
– Forgot Password
– Registration

• Menus, content records, etc. can all be locked down with
permissions.



List users



Edit users



List groups



Edit group



List permissions



Edit permission



Sympal Admin Generator
Theme



• Sympal comes with custom admin
generator them
• Tabbed forms for fieldsets and
embedded forms



Easily click Filters to popup the
filters form



Floating Editor Panel



When logged in as editor and viewing a content
record a floating editor panel is displayed



Content Slot Types



• A content slot in Sympal is an
arbitrary piece of content and has a
type.

• Sympal comes bundled with a few
content slot types



• The default slot types offered by
Sympal are
– Markdown
– MultiLineText
– RichText
– Text
• Add your own custom slot types for
your projects


YUI Rich Text Editor



The RichText slot type uses the YUI
rich text editor



The YUI rich text editor also
implements the ability to upload
and embed images inline



Sending E-Mails



• A reoccurring need
• Re-implementing the functionality
over and over wasting time
• We need a standard way to send
and manage our e-mail templates
• Sympal offers a solution



In your actions you can easily
create new e-mails and send them
class my_moduleActions extends sfActions
{
public function executeSome_action(sfWebRequest $request)
{
$variables = array(
'name' => 'Jonathan H. Wage'
);
$email = $this->newEmail('email_module/test', $variables);
$email->send('jonwage@gmail.com');
}
}



• The templates used for a Sympal e-
mail are just a partial or component
• In the previous example we use a
partial named _test.php
Hello <?php echo $name ?>,
This is a test e-mail that we are sending to <?php echo $name ?>



• The first line of the template is the
subject
• The second line and after is the
body of the e-mail
• This way the contents of the e-
mail(subject and body) are
managed in one place


• The newEmail() method returns an
instance of sfSympalMail

• sfSympalMail is a wrapper around
your mail sending program which
defaults to Swift in Sympal



Multiple Sites



• Sympal can handle multiple sites

• A sympal site is directly bound to a
symfony application

• This is how Sympal knows which
site you are in and can limit the
data to only that site


Search Engine Optimization



• SEO capabilities are built in
• You can specify global title,
keywords and description for your
project.
• They can also be overridden by
each site or even by individual
content records


• sfSympalAutoSEOPlugin
– Who is going to write it? :)
– Automatically generate SEO for content
records from the final rendered HTML
• Parse the first <h1> tag value for the meta title
• Build a list of top words used in the content
record for the meta keywords
• Parse the first <p> tag value for the meta
description
– Write good content and you’ll have SEO



Dashboard



When a user logs in and has some credentials he’ll be
forwarded to his dashboard. A super administrator would
see everything. Something like the below...



• Dashboard is generated using the
sfSympalMenu classes

• The menu instance used to
generate the dashboard is passed
through an event so you can easily
add to it by connecting to an event


Connect to dashboard event and
add to the menu object
class sfSympalTestPluginConfiguration extends sfPluginConfiguration
{
public function initialize()
{
$this->dispatcher->connect('sympal.load_dashboard_boxes',
array($this, 'loadDashboardBoxes')
);
}

public function loadDashboardBoxes(sfEvent $event)
{
$menu = $event['menu'];
$menu->addChild('My New Box', '@route_name');
}
}



Multiple Themes



• Sympal offers the ability to have
themes and you can configure in
multiple places what them to use
– Globally
– Per site
– Per content type
– Or per content record



• We can now easily have Sympal theme plugins
that you can download and instantly have a
new theme to change to
• We already have three themes available that
you can download and use
– sfSympalPlugin - The default theme included with
Sympal
– sfSympalJwageThemePlugin - The theme used on my
personal website, jwage.com
– sfSympalDoctrineThemePlugin - The theme which
powers the Doctrine website


Doctrine Theme

Sympal Theme



Sympal CLI Tasks



Sympal comes with some other
pretty useful tasks for improving
your productivity when working in
Symfony



• Most notable CLI tasks
– sympal:delete-model - Delete a model from your
project. Finds and deletes model, form and filter files all
in one command
– sympal:report-statistics - This task will report back to the
Symfony Plugins API what all plugins you’re using in
your project and will add them to your stack.
– sympal:event-list - Report a list of events that are
available for a URL in your application
• See who has connected to an event



Show a list of all available events
for a URL



Show only the events which have
been connected to



Inspect an individual event to see
who has connected to it and more
importantly where!


Sympal CMS Built on Symfony

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