Display a section
We offer three ways to display a section which should cover all the different cases.
Global sections
If you want to add a section that holds its content all over your site, you will have to use the global_section Liquid tag. Usually, global sections are called from a layout page that other pages will inherit from. This is useful for header, footer and nav sections for instance.
The content of the section will be shared across pages. In other words, updating the content of a global section in any page will also be applied to all the pages referencing that section.
By default, in the editor UI, global sections will appear before the section dropzone.
If you want your section to be at the bottom of the list of sections, you'll have to specify the placement option. This option takes 2 values: top and bottom.
Example
{% global_section nav, placement: 'top' %}
{% sections_dropzone %}
{% global_section my_awesome_footer, placement: 'bottom' %}
Quick reminder about the placement attribute
It controls the display of the section in editor UI (i.e.: the "back-office").
Defining content in Wagon
The content comes from the global_content property in your section definition. global_content is an alias for the default property.
Standalone sections
Sometimes, because of how the design of the site has been thought, it doesn't really make sense to let the users add or remove sections.
That's why we provide the section Liquid tag.
Example
<div class="left-column">
{% section photo_gallery %}
</div>
<div class="right-column">
{% section text_image %}
{% section form %}
</div>
You can call the same section multiple times in a page
Just simply pass an unique identifier to the
sectiontag. Ex.:{% section gallery, id: 'another_gallery' %}
Defining content in Wagon
In the YAML part of your page, just add the sections_content property. This property stores the content of your standalone sections in a JSON object. The keys are the ids of your sections.
sections_content:
fancy:
settings:
greeting_word: Salutation
avatar: "/samples/avatar/gentleman"
blocks:
- type: person
settings:
name: sir
sections_content: >
{
"fancy": {
"settings": {
"greeting_word": "Salutation",
"avatar": "/samples/avatar/gentleman"
},
"blocks": [
{
"type": "person",
"settings" {
"name": "sir"
}
}
]
}
}
Sections in a dropzone
Here lies the true power of sections!
To let your users add, remove, update and re-order sections in a page, just add the sections_dropzone Liquid tag in the template of your page.
In the editor UI, this will display a widget allowing your users to easily manage the sections.
Only sections which own a presets attribute will be available within the sections_dropzone
dropzone_presetsis an alias forpresets.
Example
<div class="page-sections">
{% sections_dropzone %}
</div>
Defining content in Wagon
If there is no sections_dropzone_content property in your YAML header, no sections will be displayed within your sections_dropzone Liquid tag.
The sections_dropzone_content YAML attribute is a JSON array of objects. Each object owns 3 attributes: type, settings and blocks.
---
sections_dropzone_content:
- type: simple_slider
settings: {}
blocks:
- type: slide
settings:
title: A brand new way to excite <br>your audience
description: Who can visualize the sorrow and mineral
image: slide1.png
- type: slide
settings:
title: A meaningless form of vision is the uniqueness!
image: slide2.png
- type: our_work
settings:
title: Our projects
description: Play with colors, animations and content.
blocks:
- type: list_item
settings:
title: 'Item #1'
image: "/samples/products/grid-1.jpg"
- type: list_item
settings:
title: 'Item #2'
image: "/samples/products/grid-2.jpg"
---
sections_dropzone_content: >
[
{
"type": "simple_slider",
"settings": {},
"blocks": [
{
"type": "slide",
"settings": {
"title": "A brand new way to excite <br>your audience",
"description": "Who can visualize the sorrow and mineral",
"image": "slide1.png"
}
},
{
"type": "slide",
"settings": {
"title": "A meaningless form of vision is the uniqueness!",
"image": "slide2.png"
}
}
]
},
{
"type": "our_work",
"settings": {
"title": "Our projects",
"description": "Play with colors, animations and content."
},
"blocks": [
{
"type": "list_item",
"settings": {
"title": "Item #1",
"image": "/samples/products/grid-1.jpg"
}
},
{
"type": "list_item",
"settings": {
"title": "Item #2",
"image": "/samples/products/grid-2.jpg"
}
}
]
}
]
---
Section wrapping
LocomotiveCMS wraps sections when rendering the HTML. Depending on which Liquid tag you use to display your sections, LocomotiveCMS will use different strategies to wrap them.
In case of the sections_dropzone tag, two layers of DIV elements will be rendered:
- A single outer DIV will wrap all sections and will have
locomotive-sectionsapplied as the value in its class attribute. - Within this, each section will be wrapped in its own individual DIV tag with
locomotive-sectionapplied as the value in its class attribute, as well as any values provided in theclassattribute in the section definition. The id attribute of the DIV will be renderedlocomotive-section-dropzone-with name of the section (or its id) appended. A data attribute,data-locomotive-section-type, will also be applied to this element.
Standalone and global section tags will only be wrapped within the individual DIV tag described above, with locomotive-section applied as the value in its class attribute, as well as any values provided in the class attribute in the section definition. The id attribute of the DIV will be rendered locomotive-section- with name of the section (or its id) appended.
<!-- Sections rendered by the {% sections_dropzone %} tag -->
<!-- Single outer div -->
<div class="locomotive-sections">
<!-- For each section rendered... -->
<div id="locomotive-section-dropzone-x" class="locomotive-section [values provided in the class attribute of the section definition]" data-locomotive-section-type="[section slug]">
<!-- Content of individual section -->
</div>
</div>
<!-- Single Div -->
<div id="locomotive-section-standalone" class="locomotive-section [values provided in the class property of the section definition]" data-locomotive-section-type="standalone">
<!-- Content of section -->
</div>
Overriding section DIV elements
It is possible to override the automatically generated individual DIV wrapper by including it in the section Liquid template. In this case, you must provide the necessary id, class and data attributes. For example:
<section id="{{ section.anchor_id }}" class="{{ section.css_class }}" {{ section.locomotive_attributes }}>Note: In this example the DIV element has been replaced with a SECTION element. The id, class and data attributes have been provided via the
{{ section.anchor_id }},{{ section.css_class }}and{{ section.locomotive_attributes }}tags, respectively. Additional values could be applied to the class attribute if desired.
Block Nesting
Section blocks can be nested when the attribute blocks_display is set to tree and attribute block_max_length is set above the default 0.
LocomotiveCMS will automatically handle the UI of block nesting in the back-office editor. Blocks can be nested simply by dragging a block to the right and dropping it under an intended parent block.
Section Liquid templates, on the other hand, require specific setup to display nested blocks. The default for block in section.blocks must be replaced with for block in section.blocks_as_tree and conditional statements must be added to check whether a block has_leaves?, i.e. whether the block has other blocks nested beneath it.
A picture paints a thousand words, but in this case, code...
Example
{% for block in section.blocks_as_tree %}
{% if block.type == 'container' %}
<div class="flex-container">
{% if block.has_leaves? %}
{% for _block in block.leaves %}
{% if _block.type == 'item' %}
<div class="flex-item">
{% if _block.has_leaves? %}
{% for __block in _block.leaves %}
<!-- etc, etc -->
{% endfor %}
{% endif %}
</div>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% endif %}
</div>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
The above example is a very simple one. In practice, it will likely be more managable to use snippets for each block type. Snippets can be used recursively if blocks are passed using the with parameter, e.g. {% include 'block-item' with: block: _block %}.
Updated 6 months ago