silverstripe-framework/docs/en/02_Developer_Guides/01_Templates/04_Rendering_Templates.md

title	summary	icon
Rendering data to a template	Call and render Silverstripe CMS templates manually.	code

Rendering data to a template

Templates do nothing on their own. Rather, they are used to render a particular object. All of the <% if %>, <% loop %> and other variables are methods or parameters that are called on the current object in scope. All that is necessary is that the object is an instance of ViewableData (or one of its subclasses).

The following will render the given data into a template. Given the template:

app/templates/Coach_Message.ss

<strong>$Name</strong> is the $Role on our team.

Our application code can render into that view using renderWith. This method is called on the ViewableData instance with a template name or an array of templates to render.

app/src/Page.php

$arrayData = new SilverStripe\View\ArrayData([
    'Name' => 'John',
    'Role' => 'Head Coach'
]);

echo $arrayData->renderWith('Coach_Message');

// returns "<strong>John</strong> is the Head Coach on our team."

If your template is a Layout template that needs to be rendered into the main Page template (to include a header and footer, for example), you need to render your Layout template into a string, and pass that as the Layout parameter to the Page template.

$data = [
    'Title' => 'Message from the Head Coach'
];

return $this->customise([
    'Layout' => $this
                ->customise($data)
                ->renderWith(['Template\Path\From\templates\Layout\Coach_Message'])
])->renderWith(['Page']);

[info] Most classes in Silverstripe CMS you want in your template extend ViewableData and allow you to call renderWith. This includes Controller, FormField and DataObject instances. [/info]

$controller->renderWith(['MyController', 'MyBaseController']);

SilverStripe\Security\Security::getCurrentUser()->renderWith('Member_Profile');

renderWith can be used to override the default template process. For instance, to provide an ajax version of a template.

use SilverStripe\CMS\Controllers\ContentController;

class PageController extends ContentController
{
    private static $allowed_actions = ['iwantmyajax'];

    public function iwantmyajax()
    {
        if (Director::is_ajax()) {
            return $this->renderWith('AjaxTemplate');
        } else {
            return $this->httpError(404);
        }
    }
}

Any data you want to render into the template that does not extend ViewableData should be wrapped in an object that does, such as ArrayData or ArrayList.

use SilverStripe\View\ArrayData;
use SilverStripe\ORM\ArrayList;
use SilverStripe\Control\Director;
use SilverStripe\CMS\Controllers\ContentController;

class PageController extends ContentController
{
    // ..
    public function iwantmyajax()
    {
        if (Director::is_ajax()) {
            $experience = new ArrayList();
            $experience->push(new ArrayData([
                'Title' => 'First Job'
            ]));

            return $this->customise(new ArrayData([
                'Name' => 'John',
                'Role' => 'Head Coach',
                'Experience' => $experience
            ]))->renderWith('AjaxTemplate');
        } else {
            return $this->httpError(404);
        }
    }
}

Related Lessons

• Controller actions/DataObjects as pages
• AJAX behaviour and ViewableData
• Dealing with arbitrary template data
• Creating filtered views