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Created September 13, 2016 02:14
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Templating in EE vs. Craft

Templating in EE vs. Craft

Lots of people have asked, so here are a few common tasks you might do in your templates, as they would be written in ExpressionEngine vs. Craft.

Table of Contents

  1. Comments
  2. Conditionals
  3. Loops
  4. Looping through entries
  5. Single-entry pages
  6. Looping through Matrix rows
  7. Looping through assets
  8. DRY site header and footer
  9. Template includes
  10. Stuff you can only do in Craft
  11. Stuff you can only do in EE

1. Comments

Let’s start simple! Both CMSes support comment tags, enabling you to make notes in the template code that never make it to the browser.

ExpressionEngine

{!-- You can’t see me! --}

Craft

{# You can’t see me! #}

Resources:


2. Conditionals

ExpressionEngine

{if something == 'value'}
    ...
{if:elseif something_else == 'other_value'}
    ...
{if:else}
    ...
{/if}

Craft

{% if something == 'value' %}
    ...
{% elseif somethingElse == 'otherValue' %}
    ...
{% else %}
    ...
{% endif %}

Resources:


3. Loops

ExpressionEngine

EE loops are always done with a tag pair, named after what we’re looping through.

{exp:channel:entries channel="news"}
    {matrix_field}
        ...
    {/matrix_field}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Craft

Looping through things in Craft is always done with a for-loop, where you pass in what you want to loop through, as well as what you want to call each item within the loop.

{% for entry in craft.entries.section('news') %}
    {% for block in entry.matrixField %}
        ...
    {% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

There are pros and cons to both ways: EE’s is more elegant for simple things, but you can quickly run into tag name conflicts and other gotcha’s when dealing with more complex templates. That’s never an issue with Craft, but it’s at the expense of a more verbose and less straightforward syntax.

Both CMSes have various tags that are available within the loops, as well:

Thing ExpressionEngine Craft
How many items? {total_results} {{ loop.length }}
1-based index {count} {{ loop.index }}
0-based index SOL {{ loop.index0 }}
Number of items left SOL {{ loop.revindex0 }}
Number of ites left, inc. this one SOL {{ loop.revindex }}
First item? {if count == 1} {% if loop.first %}
Last item? {if count == total_results} {% if loop.last %}
Odd? {if count % 2 == 1} {% if loop.index is odd %}
Even? {if count % 2 == 0} {% if loop.index is even %}
Cycle through values for each item {switch='odd|even'} {{ cycle(['odd','even'], loop.index0) }}
The parent loop’s index SOL {{ loop.parent.loop.index }}

Resources:


4. Looping through entries

ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine’s {exp:channel:entries} tag is optimized for this task (assuming you’re not on a single-entry page!). Just tell it which channel, how many, and so on.

{exp:channel:entries channel="news" limit="10"}
    <h2><a href="{path='news/{url_title}'}">{title}</a></h2>
    <p>{summary}</p>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Craft

In Craft you grab the entries using craft.entries and loop through them with a for-loop. You get to choose a variable name that each entry is going to be set to. In this case we’re going with newsEntry so it’s clear which ‘title’ we’re outputting, etc..

{% for newsEntry in craft.entries.section('news').limit(10) %}
    <h2><a href="{{ newsEntry.url }}">{{ newsEntry.title }}</a></h2>
    <p>{{ newsEntry.summary }}</p>
{% endfor %}

Resources:


5. Single-entry pages

ExpressionEngine

Assuming everything’s in the right place, this is the one time the dynamic parameter will actually help you out, saving you from having to type url_title="{segment_2}" limit="1" (Whew!).

{exp:channel:entries channel="news"}
    <h1>{title}</h1>
    {body}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Craft

Entries in Craft have their own URLs, so Craft knows for a fact which entry you’re trying to access, and which template it should load. In the process it will pass an entry variable, pre-set to the entry you’re accessing. (In this case you don’t get a choice on what the entry variable name is going to be called.)

<h1>{{ entry.title }}</h1>
{{ entry.body }}

Resources:


6. Looping through Matrix rows

ExpressionEngine

Matrix follows the standard EE fieldtype convention of parsing a tag pair based on the field’s short name:

{matrix_field}
    {column_one}
    {column_two}
{/matrix_field}

Craft

As with looping through entries, we loop through Matrix blocks using a for-loop.

{% for block in entry.matrixField %}
    {{ block.fieldOne }}
    {{ block.fieldTwo }}
{% endfor %}

If you have multiple block types, you can add conditionals for them:

{% for block in entry.matrixField %}
    {% if block.type == "text" %}

        {{ block.textField }}

    {% elseif block.type == "quote" %}

        <blockquote>{{ block.quoteField }}</blockquote>
        <p>– {{ block.authorField }}</p>

    {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

Resources:


7. Looping through assets

ExpressionEngine

Like Matrix/EE, Assets uses a tag pair based on the field’s short name:

{assets_field}
     <img src="{url:image_manipulation_name}" alt="{title}"> {filename}
{/assets_field}

Craft

Like entries and Matrix fields in Craft, we once again use the for-loop to loop through assets:

{% for asset in entry.assetsField %}
    <img src="{{ asset.url('transformHandle') }}" alt="{{ asset.title }}"> {{ asset.filename }}
{% endfor %}

Resources:


8. DRY site header and footer

ExpressionEngine

In EE you would do this with two embedded templates, which you’d manually include in every normal template.

includes/_header
<html>
<head>
    <title>{if embed:page_name}{embed:page_name} - {/if}{site_name}</title>
</head>
<body>
includes/_footer
    <p class="copyright">
        &copy; {current_time format='%Y'} {site_name}
    </p>
</body>
</html>
news/index
{embed="includes/_header" page_name="News"}
    <h1>News</h1>
    ...
{embed="includes/_footer"}

Craft

Craft has the concept of Template Inheritance, which lets you define all of the common site elements in a single template, and extend it with sub-templates where necessary.

_site_layout.html
<html>
<head>
    <title>{% if pageName is defined %}{{ pageName }} - {% endif %}{{ siteName }}</title>
</head>
<body>

    {% block body %}
        Default content
    {% endblock %}
    
    <p class="copyright">
        &copy; {{ now | date('Y') }} {{ siteName }}
    </p>
</body>
</html>
news/index.html
{% extends "_site_layout" %}
{% set pageName = "News" %}

{% block body %}
    <h1>News</h1>
    ...
{% endblock %}

Resources:


9. Template includes

ExpressionEngine

As demonstrated above, you can include other templates in EE using the {embed} tag, passing any variables you want available to the embedded template as parameters:

Parent template:
{embed="includes/_photo_gallery" entry_id="{entry_id}"}
includes/_photo_gallery:
{exp:channel:entries entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" dynamic="no"}
    <div class="gallery">
        {assets_field}
            <img src="{url:manipulation_name}">
        {/assets_field}
    </div>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Craft

Craft has a similar tag, called {% include %}. Unlike {embed}, all variables that are already defined in the template leading up to the {% include %} tag will automatically be available to the included template.

Parent template:
{% include "_includes/photo_gallery" %}
_includes/photo_gallery:
<div class="gallery">
    {% for photo in entry.assetsField %}
        <img src="{{ photo.url('transformHandle') }}">
    {% endfor %}
</div>

Note how entry was already available to _includes/photo_gallery, since it was presumably already defined by the parent template.

You also have the option to pass additional variables to the included template that weren’t already defined in the parent. In the above example, we might not want the include template to worry about the entry variable’s name, and just be passed the array of images directly. We could do do that with this syntax:

Parent template:
{% include "_includes/photo_gallery" with {
    photos: entry.assetsField
} %}
_includes/photo_gallery:
<div class="gallery">
    {% for photo in photos %}
        <img src="{{ photo.url('transformHandle') }}">
    {% endfor %}
</div>

Now the include template is expecting to be passed a photos variable, and it’s up to whoever’s including it to ensure that photos is set properly. Thanks to that with parameter, we can do that without having to make a photos variable available to the parent template.

Resources:


10. Stuff you can only do in Craft

All of the above examples have been focused on things that are relatively easy to do in both EE and Craft. But thanks to Twig, there are a ton of things you can easily do in Craft that aren’t even possible in EE out of the box.

Set variables in the templates

You’re not stuck with a limited set of variable tags in Craft. Thanks to Twig, you can define new variables right in your templates, manipulate them, and output them as you see fit.

{% set title = "About Us" %}

<html>
<head>
    <title>{{ title }} - {{ siteName }}</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>{{ title | upper }}</h1>
</body>
</html>

Resources:

Mathmatical operations

There are plenty of times where it’s nice to be able to do a little math in your templates.

{{ 2 + 2 }}

{% set total = 2 + 2 %}
{{ total }}

Resources:

String manipulations

You can concatenate strings, modify them, split them into arrays, or pretty much anything else you can think of.

{% if currentUser %}
    {% set greeting = "Hello, " ~ currentUser.name %}
{% else %}
    {% set greeting = "Nice to meet you." %}
{% endif %}

{% set totalWords = greeting | split(' ') | length %}
{% set greeting = greeting ~ ' (That was '~totalWords~' words!)' %}

{# Output the greeting in all caps #}
{{ greeting | upper }}

Resources:

Create arrays

You aren’t limited to creating simple numbers and strings. You can even create full-blown arrays:

{% set nav = [
    { uri: '', title: 'Home' },
    { uri: 'about', title: 'About' },
    { uri: 'products', title: 'Products' },
    { uri: 'blog', title: 'Blog' }
] %}

<nav>
    <ul>
        {% for item in nav %}
            {% set sel = (craft.request.path == item.uri) %}
            <li><a {{ sel ? 'class="sel"' }} href="{{ url(item.uri) }}">{{ item.title }}</a></li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
</nav>

There’s also a shorthand syntax for creating arrays of consecutive numbers:

<select name="cc_exp_year">
    {% for year in now.year .. now.year+10 %}
        <option>{{ year }}</option>
    {% endfor %}
</select>

So much more

Twig has tons of useful features that make developing templates a breeze, and Craft adds even more features on top of that!

If you want to learn more, here are a few helpful templating resources:


11. Stuff you can only do in EE

Cough

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