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Kirby 3.6.6

Reusing & extending blueprints

Fields, sections, tabs and entire blueprint layouts can be reused within your blueprints. If you want, you can even create a complete component system to apply to multiple projects.

While the examples used below all refer to page blueprints, you can also

  • reuse field and field group mixins in file and user blueprints and field sections,
  • reuse all section type mixins in user blueprints and
  • reuse layout mixins in user blueprints.

Reusing and extending single fields

You can create single fields in /site/blueprints/fields and then reuse them, for example this structure field:

/site/blueprints/fields/dishes.yml
label: Dishes
type: structure
fields:
  dish:
    label: Dish
    type: text
    width: 1/3
  description:
    label: Description
    type: text
    width: 1/3
  price:
    label: Price
    type: number
    before: €
    step: 0.01
    width: 1/3

Reuse in your page blueprint:

Simple reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/restaurant-menu.yml
title: Restaurant Menu
icon: 🍕

fields:
  starters: fields/dishes

Extended reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/restaurant-menu.yml
title: Restaurant Menu
icon: 🍕

fields:
  starters:
    extends: fields/dishes
    label: Starters
  #...

Reusing and extending field groups

Create a field definition of type group with your fields:

/site/blueprints/fields/meta.yml
type: group
fields:
  date:
    type: date
    time: true
    default: now
  author:
    type: users
  tags:
    type: tags
    options: query
    query:
      fetch: site.tags.toStructure.sortBy("name", "asc")
      text: "{{ structureItem.name }}"
      value: "{{ structureItem.value }}"

Reuse in your page blueprint:

Simple reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/article.yml
sections:
  meta:
    type: fields
    fields:
      meta: fields/meta

Extended reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/article.yml
sections:
  meta:
    type: fields
    fields:
      meta:
        extends: fields/meta
        fields:
          date:
            time: false

Reusing and extending sections

You can create section blueprints (predefined sections) for pages, files and fields, which you can reuse in your blueprints.

Let's look at an example for a section of type: pages. Suppose you want to have multiple page lists in the blog.yml blueprint for drafts, unlisted and listed articles. Instead of defining the same section over and over again, you can create a basic section definition like this:

/site/blueprints/sections/articles.yml
type: pages
parent: site.find("blog")
label: Blog
layout: list
info: "{{ page.date.toDate('d.m.Y') }}"

In your blog.yml blueprint, you can now create different pages sections based on this section blueprint:

/site/blueprints/pages/blog.yml
sections:
  drafts:
    extends: sections/articles
    label: Unpublished articles
    status: draft

  unlisted:
    extends: sections/articles
    label: Articles in review
    status: unlisted

  published:
    extends: sections/articles
    label: Published articles
    status: listed

In the example, we have created three sections that extend the articles section blueprint, one for drafts, one for unlisted subpages and one for listed subpages.

In the same way, you can create a files section:

/site/blueprints/sections/image.yml
type: files
label: Cover
max: 1
layout: cards
info: "{{ file.dimensions }}"

And reuse it in your blueprint:

/site/blueprints/pages/product.yml
sections:
  cover:
    extends: sections/image
    template: cover
    min: 1
    max: 3

Check out the Starterkit section and page blueprints for more examples of section reuse.

Extending tabs

Instead of repeating yourself and adding the same tab configuration to multiple blueprints, you can keep single tab definitions in /site/blueprints/tabs and reuse them in every blueprint. A typical use case would be a SEO tab that always contains the same fields.

Let's start with the SEO tab mixin:

/site/blueprints/tabs/seo.yml
label: SEO
icon: search
fields:
  seoTitle:
    label: SEO Title
    type: text
  seoDescription:
    label: SEO Description
    type: text

This is how you can use it in a blueprint:

/site/blueprints/pages/demo.yml
title: My blueprint

tabs:

  # content tab
  content:
    label: Content
    icon: text
    preset: page
    fields:
      headline:
        label: Headline
        type: text
      text:
        label: Text
        type: textarea

  # seo tab
  seo: tabs/seo

You can see how this instantly reduces your blueprint code and leaves you with the customized parts for each blueprint type. Using such tab mixins extensively will clean your blueprints, and also makes it a lot easier to maintain them afterwards.

If you want to overwrite parts of the mixin you can use the extends option instead.

/site/blueprints/pages/demo.yml
title: My blueprint

tabs:

  # content tab
  content:
    label: Content
    icon: text
    preset: page
    fields:
      headline:
        label: Headline
        type: text
      text:
        label: Text
        type: textarea

  # seo tab
  seo:
    extends: tabs/seo
    fields:
      seoTitle:
        label: My custom SEO Title

Reusing and extending entire layouts

/site/blueprints/layouts/default.yml
tabs:
    content:
      #...
    meta:
      #...
    seo:
      #...

Reuse in your page blueprint:

Simple reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/article.yml
title: Article
extends: layouts/default

Extended reuse

/site/blueprints/pages/article.yml
title: Article
extends: layouts/default

tabs:
  content:
    sections:
      # custom sections setup for the content tab

Unset parts of extended blueprints

When you reuse mixins for blueprints, such as field definitions or entire tabs, you can unset the parts that you don't want/need.

/site/blueprints/tabs/seo.yml
label: SEO
icon: search
fields:
  seoTitle:
    label: SEO Title
    type: text
  seoDescription:
    label: SEO Description
    type: text

Then in the extending blueprint …

tabs:
  seo:
    extends: tabs/seo
    fields:
      seoDescription: false
Since 3.6.4

Multiple extends at once

You can reuse multiple blueprints at once. So you can develop a more modular system by writing less and non-repetitive code.

/site/blueprints/layout/layouts.yml
layouts:
  - "1/1"
  - "1/2, 1/2"
  - "1/4, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4"
  - "1/1, 1/3, 2/3"
  - "1/1, 2/3, 1/3"
  - "1/2, 1/2, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3"
/site/blueprints/layout/fieldsets.yml
fieldsets:
  - heading
  - text
  - image
/site/blueprints/layout/settings.yml
settings:
  fields:
    class:
      type: text
      width: 1/2
    id:
      type: text
      width: 1/2
    image:
      label: Background image
      type: files

Then in the extending blueprint …

fields:
  layout:
    type: layout
    label: Layout
    extends:
      - layout/layouts
      - layout/fieldsets
      - layout/settings