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Preview-related #global invocations

The preview of a page should frequently have other functions than the published (deployed) or generated status of this page. For example, status information or an editing function for the editor may be required within a preview.

A further requirement is language-dependent preview generation. For example, it is possible that the layout of a page differs depending on the language or that the language affects the output formatting. In addition, it is possible to prevent a special page from being generated in a specific presentation channel.

To fulfil these and other requirements the #global system object provides the option to access information in the preview, deployment and generation and to influence them.

The following table shows the preview-related operations:

Invocation	Meaning	Return data type
#global.context	Returns the current context.	Context
#global.context("IDENTIFIER")	Returns a special context. For IDENTIFIER the technical name of the desired context must be given. This can be retrieved using #global.dumpcontext. For further information about contexts see Chapter Contexts.	Context
#global.dumpcontext	Output of all context information for easier troubleshooting/debugging	String (character string)
#global.dumpcontext("SEPARATOR")	Output of all context information for easier troubleshooting/debugging, however with specification of separators for the output of the individual rows, e.g. <br>.	String (character string)
#global.encoding	Returns the given HTML encoding for the language, which is currently being generated, e.g. ISO-8859-1, UTF-8. If HTML encoding was not specified in the project settings for a language the system encoding is returned	String (character string)
#global.isRelease	Determines whether the display of the object (e.g. page or page reference) is the release status or not. true = release status false = current status	Boolean (Boolean value)
#global.language	Returns the language currently being generated.	Language
#global.language.abbreviation	Returns the abbreviation of the language currently being generated, e.g. DE, EN etc.	String (character string)
#global.language.name	Returns the name of the language currently being generated, e.g. German, English etc.	String (character string)
#global.now	Returns the current (today's) date.	Date
#global.preview	Determines whether the display of the object (e.g. page or page reference) is a preview or not. true = preview false = not a preview (e.g. deployment, generation, etc.)	Boolean (Boolean value)
#global.project	Returns the project.	Project
#global.project.id	Returns the project's ID.	Long
#global.scheduleContext	Access to information of generation schedules: This call can be used to access the execution context of a generation schedule and therefore to access information such as the name of the project, the starting time of the schedule, the path to the generation directory, the number of errors during generation, etc. For further information about contexts see Chapter Contexts.	ScheduleContext
#global.startDate	Synonym for #startdate	Date
#global.version	Returns the FirstSpirit version number, e.g. 5.0.14	String (character string)

Enhanced error logging mode

The enhanced error logging mode is activated with the following expression:

$CMS_SET(#global.debugMode, true)$

Cancel a preview/generation

It is possible to prevent the generation of a preview or generation in a template. This is useful if generation is not wanted in the presentation channel of a page template (e.g. no PDF version of a document, etc.)

The expression to prevent generation is:

$CMS_SET(#global.stopGenerate, true)$

Examples

Several examples of use of the instruction within templates are shown in the following. The examples are intended to clearly show the specific effect of the instruction and provide help for the template developer when creating their own templates.

The examples displayed here must be adjusted for use within a project! For example, variable names must be changed to the specific variable names of the project in which the instruction is to be used.

1st Example: Language-specific output of the date

$CMS_IF(#global.language.abbreviation == "DE")$
  $CMS_VALUE(#global.now.format("dd.MM.yyyy"))$
$CMS_ELSE$
  $CMS_VALUE(#global.now.format("MM/dd/yyyy"))$
$CMS_END_IF$

In the example, in the language with the abbreviation DE the current date is displayed in the notation Day, Month and Year - separated by a dot. For all other languages the current date is output in the notation Month, Day and Year.

Output for language with the abbreviation DE:

22.05.2007

Output for all other languages

05/22/2007

2nd Example: Greeting in the preview

$CMS_IF(#global.preview)$
  Welcome to our Intranet site
$CMS_END_IF$

The sentence Welcome to our Intranet site is output in the preview.

3rd Example: Dynamic HTML framework

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="$CMS_VALUE(#global.language.abbreviation.toLowerCase)$" lang="$CMS_VALUE(#global.language.abbreviation.toLowerCase)$">
  <head>
    ...
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=$CMS_VALUE(#global.encoding)$" />
    ...

Depending on the generated language, the language abbreviation is used in lower case letters for XML language information.

Further, the given language encoding is used.

Output:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="de" lang="de">
  <head>
    ...
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
    ...

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