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What is renderResources

A general purpose snippet for rendering the output of a collection of Resources.

Requirements

  • MODX Revolution 2.1.0 or later
  • PHP 5.1.2 or later

History

renderResources was first written by Jason Coward (opengeek) and released on March 19th, 2012. Development and bug reports are on Github.

Download

It can be downloaded from within the MODX Revolution manager via Package Management, or from the MODX Extras Repository, here: https://modx.com/extras/package/renderresources

It is NOT a replacement for Ditto, but rather an alternative component that can accomplish some of the things that the more specialized components do, i.e. Ditto, Wayfinder, Breadcrumbs; basically anything that output the properties for a list of Resources (formerly Documents in MODX Evolution).

Usage

The renderResources snippet can be called using the tag:

[[renderResources]]

Calls without a &tpl property specified simply return the output from each Resource.

renderResources cannot be used with binary Content Types, or with modSymLink or modWebLink Resources. These Resources will be excluded from the selection criteria automatically.

Available Properties

Templating Properties

Name Description Default Value
tpl Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for the Resource output. If not provided, the output of the Resource is returned directly.
tplOdd Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for resources with an odd idx value (see idx property)
tplFirst Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for the first resource
tplLast Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for the last resource
tpl_N Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for the Nth resource, for example &tpl_4=tpl4th
tpl_nN Name of a chunk serving as a wrapper template for every Nth resource, for example &tpl_n4=tpl4th would apply to any item divisible by 4
outputSeparator An optional string to separate each tpl instance "\n"
toPlaceholder If set, will assign the result to this placeholder instead of outputting it directly.
toSeparatePlaceholders If set, will assign EACH result to a separate placeholder named by this param suffixed with a sequential number (starting from 0).

Selection Properties

Name Description
parents Comma-delimited list of ids serving as parents. Use -1 to ignore parents when specifying resources to include. Default Value: current Resource id
resources Comma-delimited list of ids to include in the results. Prefix an id with a dash to exclude the resource from the result.
depth Integer value indicating depth to search for resources from each parent. Default Value: 10
publishedon
sortbyAlias Query alias for sortby field
sortbyEscaped Escapes the field name specified in sortby
sortdir Order which to sort by. Default Value: DESC
sortbyTV Template Variable to sort by
sortdirTV Order which to sort by when using sortbyTV. Default Value: DESC
sortbyTVType Specify the data type of the sortby TV. Possible values are string, integer, decimal, datetime. Default Value: string
limit Limits the number of resources returned. Default Value: 5
offset An offset of resources returned by the criteria to skip. Default Value: 0
where A JSON-style expression of criteria to build any additional where clauses from. See below for an example. See xpdoquery.where
context Which Context should be searched in. Defaults to the current Context.

tvFilters

Can be used to filter resources by certain TV values. These are entered as [(tvname)(operator)](value). There are two delimiters you can use to combine filter conditions.

You can have "OR" filters using two pipe symbols. An OR filter fetches resources that has one of the listed TV values.

mytv==somevalue||mytv==othervalue

You can also use an "and" filter using a comma. This will make sure that all the conditions are met.

mytv==somevalue,othertv==othervalue

For advanced filtering you can also group these. It is important to know that conditions are first seperated based on the OR (||) delimiter, and after that on the AND (,) delimiter. So let's take this hypothetical example:

mytv==foo||mytv==bar,bartv==3||bartv==1

This will filter resources to meet one of the following conditions:

  • mytv is LIKE foo, or:
  • mytv is LIKE bar AND bartv is LIKE 3, or:
  • bartv is LIKE 1 The examples above search for exact values. If you want, you can also use the percentage sign (%) as a wildcard. For example:
mytv==%a%

Matches any resources that has an "a" in the mytv value.

mytv==a%

Matches any resources that have a mytv value that starts with an a, and anything after that.

mytv==%a

Matches any resources that have a mytv value that ends with an a, but can have anything in front of it.

Of course you can also combine this with the OR (||) and AND (,) delimiters explained above.

It is important to know that this function looks at the raw value of a template variable for a specific resource. This means that the value has been explicitly set for the resource, and that it has not been processed by a template variable output type. So if you have an "autotag" tv, this means the raw value is a comma delimited list, and it is not split up in tags like you see it in the manager.

Available filter operators:

There are a number of comparison operators for use when creating filter conditions. In addition, when using many of these operators, numeric comparison values are automatically CAST TV values to numeric before comparison. Here is a list of the valid operators:

Filter Operator SQL Operator
!== != Yes
<> <> Yes
== LIKE No
!= NOT LIKE No
<< < Yes
<= <= Yes
=< =< Yes
>> > Yes
>= >= Yes
=> => Yes
sortby Any Resource Field (excluding Template Variables) to sort by. Some common fields to sort on are publishedon, menuindex, pagetitle etc, but see the Resources documentation for all fields. Specify fields with the name only, not using the tag syntax. Note that when using fields like template, publishedby and the likes for sorting, it will be sorted on the raw values, so the template or user ID, and NOT their names.

You can also sort randomly by specifying RAND(), like so:

&sortby=`RAND()`

This can also be a JSON array to sort on multiple fields, e.g.

&sortby=`{"publishedon":"ASC","createdon":"DESC"}`

If you want to to sort in a specific order, you can do so by specifying a resource id-list like this:

&sortby=`FIELD(modResource.id, 4,7,2,5,1 )`

The same thing is possible if you put the sorted IDs in a template variable, like this:

&sortby=`FIELD(modResource.id,[[*templateVariable]])`

Other Properties

Name Description Default Value
showUnpublished If true, will also show Resources if they are unpublished. 0
showDeleted If true, will also show Resources regardless if they are deleted. 0
showHidden If true, will show Resources regardless if they are hidden from the menus. 0
hideContainers If set, will not show any Resources marked as a container (is_folder). 0
idx You can define the starting idx of the resources, which is an property that is incremented as each resource is rendered 1
first Define the idx which represents the first resource 1
last Define the idx which represents the last resource. Default is # of resources being summarized + first - 1
totalVar Define the key of a placeholder set by renderResources indicating the total number of Resources that would be selected not considering the limit value. total
debug If true, will send the SQL query to the MODX log. false

Examples

Output a list of child Resources of the current Resource, using the 'myRowTpl' chunk:

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`[[*id]]`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Output all resources beneath the Resource with ID '5', with the exception of resource 10, using the 'myRowTpl' chunk:

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`5`
    &resources=`-10`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Output only the resources specified, using the 'myRowTpl' chunk:

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`-1`
    &resources=`10,11,12`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Output the top 5 latest published Resources beneath the Resource with ID '5', with tpl 'blogPost':

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`5`
    &limit=`5`
    &tpl=`blogPost`
    &includeContent=`1`
]]

Output a list of child Resources of the current Resource, based on the Resource-template:

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`[[*id]]`
    &where=`{"template:=":8}`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Output a list of child Resources of the current Resource, where the Resource-template ID is 1 or 2:

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`[[*id]]`
    &where=`{"template:=":1, "OR:template:=":2}`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Output a list of child Resources of the current Resource, where the Resource-template ID is 1, 2 or 3 (you cannot use the same key name more than once):

[[!renderResources?
    &parents=`[[*id]]`
    &where=`{"template:IN":[1,2,3]}`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Display a message when no results found (equivalent of "empty" parameter in Ditto):

[[!renderResources:default=`No results found`?
    &parents=`[[*id]]`
    &tpl=`myRowTpl`
]]

Using getPage for Pagination

When combined with getPage, renderResources allows you to do powerful and flexible pagination on your pages.

Examples

Grab first 10 Resources - sorted by publishedon - below the Resource ID 17, no more than 2 levels deep, with the tpl 'blogListPost', including the TVs and content:

[[!getPage?
   &elementClass=`modSnippet`
   &element=`renderResources`

   &parents=`17`
   &depth=`2`
   &limit=`10`
   &pageVarKey=`page`

   &tpl=`blogListPost`
]]
<div class="paging">
<ul class="pageList">
  [[!+page.nav]]
</ul>
</div>

and the chunk blogListPost:

<div class="blogPost">
  [[+output]]
  <div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<hr/>

Troubleshooting

Nothing comes up! Just to be sure, is renderResources installed?

See Also

If you want to render properties of Resources rather than the complete output, use getResources. If you only need to get a single field from a foreign resource, try using getResourceField.

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