Displaying content on the front
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office
As it is, the module does not do much. In order to display something on the front - office, we have to add support for a few hooks. This is done by implementing the hooks' methods, and that was actually done in the install() method we wrote earlier, using the registerHook() method:
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Save your file, and already you can hook your module's template into the theme, move it around and transplant it (even though there is not template file for the moment): go to the "Positions" page from the "Modules" menu in the back-officeback office, then click on the "Transplant a module" button (top right of the page).
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The module is now attached to the left column... but without any template to display, it falls short of doing anything useful: if you reload the homepage, the left column simply displays a message where the module should be, saying "No template found for module mymodule".
Displaying content
Now that we have access to the left column, we should display something there for the customer to see.
The visible part of the module is defined in .tpl files placed in specific View folders:
/views/templates/front/: front-office front office features./views/templates/admin/: back-office back office features./views/templates/hook/: features hooked to a PrestaShop (so can be displayed either on the front-office front office or the back-officeback office).
Template files can have just about any name. It there is only one such file, it is good practice to give it the same name as the folder and main file: mymodule.tpl.
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| Note | ||
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If you've followed this tutorial to the letter and still do not see anything appearing in the theme's left column, it might be because PrestaShop has cached the previous templates, and is still serving these to you. Hence, you see the original version of the theme, without your changes. Smarty caches a compiled version of the homepage, for performance reasons. This is immensely helpful for production sites, but is useless for tests sites, where you may load the front-page very regularly in order to see the impact of your changes. When editing or debugging a theme on a test site, you should always disable the cache, in order to force Smarty to recompile templates on every page load.
Do NOT disable the cache or enable the debug console on a production site, as it severely slows everything down! |
Embedding a template in the theme
The link that the module displays does not lead anywhere for now. Let's create the display.php file that it targets, with a minimal content, and put it in the module's root folder.
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It is only a first step, but this gives you an idea of what is possible if you follow the templating rules.
Using Smarty
Smarty is a PHP template engine, and is used by PrestaShop's theming system. It is a free and open-source projet, hosted at http://www.smarty.net/.
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