<com:TContent ID="Main"> <h1>Creating <tt>ListPost</tt> Page</h1> <p> The <tt>ListPost</tt> page shows the latest blog posts in a list. If there are too many posts, they will be displayed in several pages. </p> <p> Before we proceed with the implementation, we would like to point our homepage to the upcoming <tt>ListPage</tt> page, because we want the users to see latest posts when they hit the website. To do so, we modify the application configuration <tt>protected/application.xml</tt> as follows, </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="xml"> ...... <services> <service id="page" class="TPageService" DefaultPage="posts.ListPost"> <pages MasterClass="Application.layouts.MainLayout" /> </service> </services> </com:TTextHighlighter> <p> We now create the template and class files for the <tt>ListPost</tt> page: <tt>protected/pages/posts/ListPost.page</tt> and <tt>protected/pages/posts/ListPost.php</tt>. </p> <h2>Creating Page Template</h2> <p> Based on the functionality requirement of the <tt>ListPost</tt> page, we will use two controls in the page template: </p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Controls.Repeater">TRepeater</a>: this control is mainly used to display a list of data items. The presentation of the each data item can be specified via an inline template or an external template control (the approach we will use here).</li> <li><a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Controls.Pager">TPager</a>: this control is used to paginate a list of data items. It interacts with end-users to determine which page of data to be displayed in a <a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Controls.List">list control</a> (e.g. <tt>TListBox</tt>) or <a href="http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Controls.Data">data control</a> (e.g. <tt>TRepeater</tt>).</li> </ul> <p> Below is the content in the page template: </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="prado"> <%@ Title="My Blog" %> <com:TContent ID="Main"> <com:TRepeater ID="Repeater" ItemRenderer="Application.pages.posts.PostRenderer" AllowPaging="true" AllowCustomPaging="true" PageSize="5" /> <com:TPager ControlToPaginate="Repeater" OnPageIndexChanged="pageChanged" /> </com:TContent> </com:TTextHighlighter> <p> In the repeater, we specify that the repeated content is to be displayed using the item renderer <tt>PostRenderer</tt> which we will create soon after. In order for PRADO to find this class, we give the complete namespace path <tt>Application.pages.posts.PostRenderer</tt>, meaning the class file is <tt>protected/pages/posts/PostRenderer.php</tt>. </p> <p> We also set a few other properties of repeater to enable paging. And we set <tt>ControlToPaginate</tt> property of the pager so that it knows whose repeated content should be paginated. </p> <h2>Creating Page Class</h2> <p> From the above page template, we see that we need to write a page class that implements the event handler: <tt>pageChanged()</tt> (attached to the pager's <tt>OnPageIndexChanged</tt> event). We also need to populate post data into the repeater according to the current paging setting. The following is the complete source code of the page class: </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="php"> class ListPost extends TPage { /** * Initializes the repeater. * This method is invoked by the framework when initializing the page * @param mixed event parameter */ public function onInit($param) { parent::onInit($param); if(!$this->IsPostBack) // if the page is requested the first time { // get the total number of posts available $this->Repeater->VirtualItemCount=PostRecord::finder()->count(); // populates post data into the repeater $this->populateData(); } } /** * Event handler to the OnPageIndexChanged event of the pager. * This method is invoked when the user clicks on a page button * and thus changes the page of posts to display. */ public function pageChanged($sender,$param) { // change the current page index to the new one $this->Repeater->CurrentPageIndex=$param->NewPageIndex; // re-populate data into the repeater $this->populateData(); } /** * Determines which page of posts to be displayed and * populates the repeater with the fetched data. */ protected function populateData() { $offset=$this->Repeater->CurrentPageIndex*$this->Repeater->PageSize; $limit=$this->Repeater->PageSize; if($offset+$limit>$this->Repeater->VirtualItemCount) $limit=$this->Repeater->VirtualItemCount-$offset; $this->Repeater->DataSource=$this->getPosts($offset,$limit); $this->Repeater->dataBind(); } /** * Fetches posts from database with offset and limit. */ protected function getPosts($offset, $limit) { // Construts a query criteria $criteria=new TActiveRecordCriteria; $criteria->OrdersBy['create_time']='desc'; $criteria->Limit=$limit; $criteria->Offset=$offset; // query for the posts with the above criteria and with author information return PostRecord::finder()->withAuthor()->findAll($criteria); } } </com:TTextHighlighter> <h2>Creating <tt>PostRenderer</tt></h2> <p> We still need to create the item renderer class <tt>PostRenderer</tt>. It defines how each post should be displayed in the repeater. We create it as a template control which allows to specify the post presentation using our flexible template syntax. The template and the class files are saved as <tt>PostRenderer.tpl</tt> and <tt>PostRenderer.php</tt> files under the <tt>protected/pages/posts</tt> directory, respectively. </p> <h3>Creating Renderer Template</h3> <p> The renderer template specifies the presentation of various fields in a post, including title, author name, post time and content. We link the post title to the <tt>ReadPost</tt> which shows more details of the selected post. </p> <p> The expression <tt>$this->Data</tt> refers to the data item passed to the repeater. In our case, it is a <tt>PostRecord</tt> object. Notice how we retrieve the author name of a post by <tt>$this->Data->author->username</tt>. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="prado"> <div class="post-box"> <h3> <com:THyperLink Text="<%# $this->Data->title %>" NavigateUrl="<%# $this->Service->constructUrl('posts.ReadPost',array('id'=>$this->Data->post_id)) %>" /> </h3> <p> Author: <com:TLiteral Text="<%# $this->Data->author->username %>" /><br/> Time: <com:TLiteral Text="<%# date('m/d/Y h:m:sa', $this->Data->create_time) %>" /> </p> <p> <com:TLiteral Text="<%# $this->Data->content %>" /> </p> </div> </com:TTextHighlighter> <h3>Creating Renderer Class</h3> <p> The renderer class is very simple. It extends from <tt>TRepeaterItemRenderer</tt> and contains no other code. </p> <com:TTextHighlighter CssClass="source" Language="php"> class PostRenderer extends TRepeaterItemRenderer { } </com:TTextHighlighter> <h2>Testing</h2> <p> To test the <tt>ListPost</tt> page, visit the URL <tt>http://hostname/blog/index.php</tt> (remember we have set <tt>ListPost</tt> as our new homepage). We shall expect to see the following result. Since we only have one post at the moment, the pager will not show up. Later when we finish <tt>NewPost</tt>, we can add more posts and come back to test the paging again. </p> <img src="<%~ output.gif %>" class="output" /> </com:TContent>