33 | Reuse the web page elements
34 | A web page viewed by user could be constructed by single or
35 | several reusable templates under /templates.
36 | Take 'about' page for example, each reusable template generating
37 | a part of the page.
38 |
39 | about.mak - This is the
40 | template that created this page. If you take a look at this template
41 | you will see that there are a lot of wacky symbols, if you are not familiar
42 | with Mako you should probably
43 | check out the docs on their site.
44 |
45 | Let's take a look at what this template does in order of execution.
46 | The first thing this template does
47 | is inherit from master.mak. We'll
48 | go into the details of this later, but for now just know that this
49 | template is allowed to both call on master.mak, and also override it's
50 | capabilites. This inheritance is what gives mako it's power to
51 | provide reusable templates.
52 |
53 | But um, whats that 'local:' stuff about?
54 |
55 | Well, TG wants to provide re-usable components like tgext.admin, and also
56 | provide a way for you to use your default site layouts. This is done
57 | easily by providing a shortcut to the namespace of your project, so the
58 | component template finder can find your master.html and format
59 | itself the way you want it to.
60 |
61 | The next thing about.mak does is to create a function called title()
62 | which provides the title for the document. This overrides the title
63 | method provided by master.mak, and therefore, when the template
64 | is rendered, it will use the title provided by this funciton.
65 |
66 |
67 | Next, there are a couple of calls to the master template to set up the
68 | boxes you see in the page over on the right, We'll examine what
69 | these are in the master template in a second. Finally, we get to the meat
70 | of the document, and that's pretty much all about.mak does
71 |
72 |
73 | master.mak -
74 | This template provides the overall layout for your project, and
75 | allows you to override different elements of the overall structure
76 | of your default look-and-feel. Let's take a look at this template
77 | from top to bottom again.
78 | The first 15 lines provide an overall layout for the document,
79 | with definitions for the header, title and body. Each one of these
80 | sections has been turned into a method that you can change within your
81 | child templates, but you do not have to provide any single one of them
82 | TurboGears extensions may however expect these methods to be provided
83 | to display their content properly. Keep this in mind if you decide
84 | to alter your master.mak. You are of course always free to modify
85 | your master template, but doing so can render your extensions useless,
86 | so tread carefully.
87 |
88 | The next section describes the overall layout for the body of the
89 | document, with flash messages appearing at the top, and self.body()
90 | appearing at the bottom. self.body will take whatever is not defined
91 | as a method in your child template and render it in this space. This
92 | is really useful because it allows you to be freestyle with your
93 | body definition. If you don't want to override any of the master
94 | template defines, all you have to do is inherit the master, and then
95 | provide the code you want to appear surrounded by your header and footer.
96 |
97 |
98 |
99 | Next are the title, header, footer and sidebar defines. These are all of
100 | course overriddable.
101 |
102 |
103 | The final define sets up the menubar. This provides some links,
104 | as well as a way of highlighing the page you are currently on.
105 |
106 |
107 | })
85 |
86 |