What does {asset name="xyz"} do?

fraxture

Hi,
I'm trying to track down what is going on when a template file includes something like the following: " {asset name="Panel"}". I've been looking through the documentation for some reference to this, but nothing has made it clear. Can someone explain? Is this somehow calling a controller, even though it is in a template?

peregrine

it is using smarty. I believe it is essentially it get the asset for the specific controller and displays.

look at library/vendors/SmartyPlugins/

and function.asset.php

fraxture

@peregrine, does the side panel have its own controller then? basically, i'm trying to hunt down how to add stuff to the side panel, which i guess needs to be done via the controller...?

peregrine

I think you are confused a bit.

assets are contents panel footer header.

there is no controller per se for a particular asset.

look at the forum donate plugin. it is about the simplest plugin there is for adding a side
panel

http://vanillaforums.org/addon/forumdonate-plugin

there are lots and lot of plugins that do this. also look at @whu606 's plugins

http://vanillaforums.org/profile/addons/19918/whu606

he has written some very nice explanatory plugins for the themes panels and assets.

hgtonight

Every controller has a bunch of modules; each module has a specific asset it renders to. The smarty tag {asset name="AssetName"} just indicates what batch of modules should be rendered. There are four common assets as @peregrine mentioned: panel, footer, header, and content. You can use any name you want. In my communities theme, I had a breadcrumbs asset that I was doing some funky stuff with. If you start reading up on modules, you notice that they all have a method called AssetTarget() which returns where that module should be rendered.

If you are creating a module, just have the AssetTarget() method return 'panel' and that is where it will be rendered. You still need to attach it to a specific controller via an event hook. ($Sender->AddModule('ModuleName'); works in general).