uwosh.snippets

Adds dynamically-updated rich text snippets to Plone. Update a snippet to display the change everywhere the snippet is used (pages, news items, events, anywhere rich text and TinyMCE appear).

Plone Version Compatibility

Version 2.x is compatible with Plone 5.0+

Earlier versions are compatible with Plone 4

Introduction

The uwosh.snippets package allows you to include dynamically updated rich text snippets (chunks of rich text) anywhere in your site that uses the TinyMCE editor (i.e., any rich text field), including Pages, News Items, and Events.

Snippets can be used anywhere that rich text can be used. They are inserted into a page much like you would an image or hyperlink.

Because snippets are dynamically rendered, if you edit the snippet, its updated rich text is shown everywhere you had inserted the snippet.

This is much more efficient and less error prone than copying and pasting rich text in multiple places in your site.

Example

A university wants to display its number of enrolled students consistently across its web site. Instead of manually updating each page that mentions the number of enrolled students and having to remember to change each of these pages whenever the enrollment number changes (e.g. annually), a content editor would create a snippet called "Enrollment Number" containing the rich text "13,491 students" and would insert that snippet wherever the enrollment number needed to be displayed.

Whenever the official enrollment number changes, the content editor edits the "Enrollment Number" snippet to update the count, e.g. "14,120 students", and saves the change. All subsequent views of pages that contained that snippet will display the updated number.

How to use

• Edit your buildout.cfg to add uwosh.snippets to your eggs.
• Run buildout.
• Restart your instance or clients.
• Go to Site Setup -> Add-ons
• Activate uwosh.snippets

A new folder called "Snippets" (with ID ".snippets") will be created at the root of your site; that is the default location where the add-on will look for snippets.

To add a snippet:

• Navigate to the Snippets folder.
• Add a Page. Give it a meaningful title and summary to help you and other content editors locate the snippet most easily. In the body, enter any rich text. You can use TinyMCE's Tools -> Source Code (HTML) view to insert arbitrarily complex HTML, as long as it satisfies your site's HTML Filtering settings.
• Click the Save button.

You have created your first snippet! You can use this snippet in one or more places on your site, anywhere TinyMCE is used as the editor.

To insert a snippet:

• Add or edit a Page (or Event or News Item or any other content item that has a rich text field that uses the TinyMCE editor).
• In the TinyMCE editor, place your cursor where you will want to have the snippet's rich text appear.
• Click on TinyMCE's new "{{}}" toolbar icon to bring up the snippet search dialog, which by default looks in your site's Snippets folder.
• Use the search dialog to locate the snippet you want to insert. Click in the search dialog's text field. You will see a list of all snippets in your snippets folder. If you enter text in the search field, you will see only the snippets that match the search term you entered.
• Click on the snippet you want to insert. The Snippet Preview will show you the contents of the snippet you selected. Use the "Select section" drop down to choose the portion of the snippet you want to preview (this is useful if you have particularly long snippets).
• Click the Insert button. A reference to the snippet (a "plug") will be inserted into the rich text at the cursor location. It will look something like "Snippet:[ID=82341234bcda]".
• Click the Save button.

Instead of seeing the snippet plug you will now see the rich text contents of the snippet.

Settings

uwosh.snippets includes a control panel, available at Site Setup -> Snippets ('@@snippets-controlpanel').

Related items settings:

• Use this to change the directory in which to look for snippets (by default, a folder with the ID .snippets and title Snippets). For example, to look for snippets in a folder with the ID blabla at the root of your site, change the value of basePath from /.snippets to /blabla.
• You can also modify the content type you use as snippets. By default, this is Pages (Documents). For example, to use the rich text field of a News Item, change the value of selectableTypes from [Document] to [News Item].

Code display expression:

• Use this to modify the way a snippet reference ("plug") is displayed inside the TinyMCE editing area. Defaults to string:Snippet:[ID=${context/@@uuid}]. This is probably not a setting you will want to change.

Render expression:

• Use this to specify the TAL expression that renders a snippet. Defaults to context/text/output|context/getText|nothing. This is probably not a setting you will want to change. See the TAL expression documentation.

Notes

If you want a snippet to be rendered without causing a line break (because of the p tag that TinyMCE wraps around the rich text), edit the snippet and, beneath the TinyMCE rich text editing area, use the Text drop down and choose text/x-web-textile. Then manually remove the p tag around the snippet's rich text and click Save. The rich text will be saved without TinyMCE re-wrapping it with the p tag, and when you use the snippet elsewhere it will not start a new paragraph.

Requirements

The TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor needs to be installed and enabled. A basic understanding of its use is also highly recommended. For more information about TinyMCE, visit their website.

TODO

• would be nice: re-add support for add/edit/delete snippets in the modal
• doesn't fit as well into how we're allowing snippets from anywhere on the site now

Credits

The original concept was developed by Sam Schwartz for the Office of International Education at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

Plone 5 compatibility was developed by Nathan Van Gheem / Wildcard Corp. for Philip Bauer / Starzel.de.

Maintainers

This add-on is maintained by Wildcard Corp., https://wildcardcorp.com, developers of the Castle CMS enhanced distribution of Plone, https://castlecms.io