How to Add a New Page to SF-Active
by gek Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2003 at 9:32 AM
gekked@indymedia.org

This is a step-by-step instruction on how to add a new page to sf-active with our current code architecture.

HOW TO MAKE A PAGE WITH THE NEW SF-ACTIVE FRAMEWORK

This is a more detailed document about how to make pages with the new sf-active framework. It is aimed at developers.

CODE STANDARDS:
Briefly, I have been doing 4-space indent, spaces instead of tabs, and you can look at classes/article_class.php for more formatting. I have been trying to make object variables protected even though php doesn't enforce it. You will see there is a lot of shortcuts going on with object variables.

MAKING A PAGE, STEP BY STEP:
First, there are now four files associated with a new sf-active webpage:

1. webpage.tpl - the template file which goes in local/templates/pages/
2. webpage.dict - the page-specific translation file, you might not need this one. in shared/dictionary/[es|en]/
3. webpage.inc - the new class for the webpage code, in shared/classes/pages/
4. webpage.php - the actual page in the document tree, admin ones are a little different.

1. Create the webpage template. For converting from previous sf-active pages, what I do is copy the entire html part of the existing file and paste it into a new file. Then, I remove all php code ... what can be replaced with a simple template variable, I replace with a template variable. If this is a new page, I just put the HTML for it in here.
2. Create the dictionary file. Once I go through the template, I have a few variables I know I can put in the dictionary file. Note that you might not need a page-specific dictionary file, if all the general terms can be put into common.inc for that language.
3. Create the PHP file. This is easy so I set it up, basically copy an existing one and replace the page name passed to the Page() constructor.
4. Create the INC class file. This is the hard part. In a nutshell, you want to put all code in the execute() method. This method should do all the logic needed for a page AND set all the relevant template variables. That's it. The page class does everything else (i.e. merge it with the template, build the html, etc). See below for some important notes on this.

1. There is a new way to display paths. All the old path formats should be replaced. Most paths are represented through a php constant, which can be referenced as: SF_INCLUDE_PATH
2. Include statements should instead use sf_include_file() ... this will apply the appropriate templating and internationalization
3. You should set up your devbox to be latest PHP4 with strict new variables (the default install). This means that in a form with variable formvar, $formvar will not work but $_POST['formvar'] will work. Also, $HTTP_POST_VARS['formvar'] will not work.
4. To set template variables in the page class, assign variables to $tkeys associative array. So, for instance, if I want to set a random message to be displayed, I do $this->tkeys['random_message'] = "This is a random message." However, to apply translation, I would do $this->tkeys['random_message'] = $tr->trans['random_message']
5. How do you build dynamic form elements with templates? See Cache::make_select_form() and Cache::make_checkbox_form()
6. Also, the "update" from a form and error from a form is standardized. See Cache::update_status(), Cache::update_error_status() and their affiliated methods.

1. common.dict is always included for a language, these are generic terms that more than one page uses
2. pagename.dict is included if it exists
3. Whatever you assign to $pagename->tkeys, an associative array, is also available in the template
4. See the Translation class for more information, including how to use the Translation::trans() method.

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