The Components That Make Up An Entando Application - Page, User Management and Localization Components

Hey my fellow developers,

Here we are for the third episode of the Entando component sub-series. After having discovered CMS content, we will learn more about how to manage pages, user groups and i18n components.

This blog post is the last of a series that dives into details about components including how they can be defined in a bundle, how they can be deployed to an Entando Application, how they are configured via Entando App Builder, and how they are rendered in your application.

Page management

Page template

A page template defines a default page configuration that is assigned to an instance of a page. Page templates can be a standard 2 column layout or can be customized to meet any design. The template combines frame configuration and HTML template rendering with Freemarker.

code: seed_home
description: Seed homepage
configuration:
 frames:
   - pos: 0
     description: brand
     mainFrame: false
     sketch:
       x1: 0
       y1: 0
       x2: 1
       y2: 0
   - pos: 1
     description: navbar
     mainFrame: false
     sketch:
       x1: 2
       y1: 0
       x2: 7
       y2: 0
   - pos: 2
     description: login widget
     mainFrame: false
     sketch:
       x1: 8
       y1: 0
       x2: 9
       y2: 0
   - pos: 3
     description: empty space
     mainFrame: false
     sketch:
       x1: 10
       y1: 0
       x2: 11
       y2: 0
[...]
templatePath: seed_home.ftl

configuration.frames contains each frame the template has, its position and the description.
- pos the position in the page, from 0 to the max number of frames you want. The position is used in the freemarker template to place it:<@wp.show frame=2 />
- description is a short description that appears on the app builder design page to let you know what is the frame is made for
- mainFrame true if it’s the main page frame
- sketch
templatePath defines the path to the freemarker template. Alternatively, you can use the template property to put the raw template directly into the descriptor.

<#assign wp=JspTaglibs["/aps-core"]><#assign c=JspTaglibs["http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"]>
<html lang="en">
<head>
   <meta charset="utf-8" />
   <title><@wp.currentPage param="title" /> - <@wp.i18n key="STANDARD_DEMO" /></title>
   <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,  user-scalable=no" />
   <meta name="description" content="" />
   <meta name="author" content="" />
   <link rel="icon" href="<@wp.info key="systemParam" paramName="applicationBaseURL" />favicon.png" type="image/png" />
   <@wp.fragment code="insurance_inclusions" escapeXml=false />
</head>
<body>
<@wp.fragment code="keycloak_auth" escapeXml=false/>
<div class="custom-navbar ">
   [...]
   <@wp.show frame=4 />
   <@wp.show frame=5 />
   <@wp.show frame=6 />
   <@wp.show frame=7 />
   <@wp.show frame=8 />
   <@wp.show frame=9 />
   <@wp.show frame=10 />
   <@wp.show frame=11 />
   <@wp.show frame=12 />
   <@wp.show frame=13 />
</div>
<@wp.fragment code="insurance_inclusions_footer" escapeXml=false />
</body>
</html>

The seedHome freemarker template. The navBar has been removed to make it easier to read

The template can be edited in the app-builder under the menu Pages > Templates > Edit

Page

A page is composed of multiple widgets or UX fragments and defines a position for each of them. A page includes a reference to a page template (“pageModel”) and will inherit everything included in the page template.

code: homepages
parentCode: homepage
titles:
 en: Home SD
 it: Home SD
pageModel: seed_home
ownerGroup: free
joinGroups: []
displayedInMenu: true
seo: false
charset: utf8
status: published
widgets:
 - code: Brand-Logo
   config: null
   pos: 0
 - code: Login_buttons
   config: null
   pos: 2
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: main-banner
     modelId: '1'
     ownerGroup: free
     contentId: SDB37
     joinGroups: '[]'
   pos: 4
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: banner light green
     modelId: '2'
     contentId: SDB34
   pos: 5
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: Banner with inner card
     modelId: '3'
     contentId: SDB31
   pos: 6
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: Banner with accordion
     modelId: '4'
     contentId: SDB16
   pos: 7
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: Banner with dark green background
     modelId: '5'
     contentId: SDB28
   pos: 8
 - code: content_viewer
   config:
     contentDescription: Banner with white background
     modelId: '6'
     contentId: SDB19
   pos: 9
 - code: footer
   config: null
   pos: 13

code is the unique page identifier.
parentCode is the code of the page parent, a page can be either a parent or a sub page.
pageModel is the page template used to render the page.
ownerGroup is the owner of the page. “free” if the page can be used without restrictions
joinGroups list of groups the page is shared with. These groups can edit and use the page.
displayedInMenu true to display this page in the default widget menu.
seo
charset the charset used to render the page according to the encoding used.
status is published if the page is available in your application.
widgets is an array of objects to define which widgets will be included in the page, it’s position and the configuration if needed.
- code the widget code you want to include. It has to be the same value as the “code“ in the widget descriptor.
- config the configuration for this widget instance, can be null if no configuration. The configuration object is related to the widget itself.
- pos the position in the page. It should match a frame pos value in the pageTemplate.

You can design and check the page configuration in the app-builder

The SD homepage is rendered through the bundle configuration we defined

User management

Groups

A group allows gathers users under a sub-organization and can be used to define the ownership of some components.

- code: bpm_admin
 name: Bpm Admin
- code: bpm_appraiser
 name: Bpm Appraiser
- code: bpm_broker
 name: Bpm Broker
- code: bpm_manager
 name: Bpm Manager

code the unique group code.
name the group name.

Groups can be displayed through the Users > Groups menu in the app builder

I18n

Languages

The languages component allows you to enable several languages in your application and to unlock labels for them.

- code: en
 description: English
- code: it
 description: Italian

code the language code, basically the ISO 639-1 code (alpha-2 code).
description a quick description of the language, most of the time the language name.

Labels

Labels are a key/value system to populate the languages you have enabled in your application.

- key: ADMINISTRATION_BASIC
 titles:
   en: Normal
   it: Normale
- key: ADMINISTRATION_BASIC_GOTO
 titles:
   en: Go to the administration with normal client
   it: Accedi con client normale
- key: ADMINISTRATION_MINT
 titles:
   en: Advanced
   it: Avanzata
- key: ADMINISTRATION_MINT_GOTO
 titles:
   en: Go to the administration with advanced client
   it: Accedi con client avanzato

key is the unique key for the label
titles contain a value for each enabled language (by code).

Languages and labels are available in the Administration > Languages & Labels menu

Compose a main descriptor file

Now that you know each component you can define a descriptor per component and group them, by convention, under a folder per component type.

For example, the Standard Demo Bundle repository has a large bundle with examples of each of the component types we reviewed in this blog post.

Once you’ve created a descriptor for each of the components they can be referenced by path from the top level descriptor.yaml file (except for static resources).

code: standard-demo
description: Standard Demo bundle
components:
 widgets:
   - widgets/brand-logo-descriptor.yaml
 pageModels:
   - pageModels/dashboard-descriptor.yaml
 fragments:
   - fragments/angular-descriptor.yaml
 pages:
   - pages/homepagesd-descriptor.yaml
 groups:
   - groups/groups-descriptor.yaml
 contentTypes:
   - contentTypes/mpc-descriptor.yaml
 contentModels:
   - contentModels/main-banner-descriptor.yaml
 assets:
   - assets/35/35-descriptor.yaml
 contents:
   - contents/mpc584-descriptor.yaml
 plugins:
   - plugins/standard-demo-banking-descriptor.yaml
 categories:
   - categories/categories-descriptor.yaml
 labels:
   - labels/labels-descriptor.yaml
 languages:
   - languages/languages-descriptor.yaml

Note the bundle uses technical names instead of official names for some components (e.g. contentModels for Content Type, pageModels for Page Template, assets for CMS Assets…). Please, refer to the documentation or the demo bundle to view the correct labels in the yaml.

Conclusion

In this blog post series we learned about all of the components we can use in our bundles and in our Entando applications. Each component has attributes that allow you to define their behavior and structure. Once you’ve built your components all you have to do is declare them in the main bundle descriptor, that's all! Easy, isn’t it?

See you soon for the next adventures with bundles and components.