TYPO3 comes with a handfull different cObjects, such as TEXT, IMAGE etc.. (see the tsref) and then there are the more general cObjects for content rendering; CONTENT and RECORDS. The CONTENTS object focuses on a more widely rendering process, where you find your data with a select property, and a renderObj output.. ..then there is the little bit simpler variant RECORDS that allows you to find and output records from one or more tables in a bit more raw way thant CONTENT allows you to.. anyway.. what I wanted to share today was this difference when outputing a RECORDS object..

Take this TypoScript:

It outputs a tt_content record with uid 47 like this:

Quite often you might want it a bit more trimmed.. (especially when you map it with typoscript object path in templavoila into a predifend position in a template). Then you can do like this

Which renders this instead:

The basic thing is – define what you want in your output, and ignore the rest. The same could be done with a logotype image or similar (mapping an image content outputs a lot of extra wrappings by default..)

Another small notice; If you map a ts object from templavoila and get HTML output as text, then edit DS/TO and uncheck “as content through htmlSpecialChars (HSC)” for that field….

• PDF Generator 2 (pdf_generator2)
• WebkitPDF (webkitpdf)

There are some others but, afaik they lack CSS support.

I started out with the first one, which was really  easy to set up and use, but when I launched it on my production server it throw memory errors, so I started to play with WebkitPDF instead. This extension is a simple but powerfull wrapping around the Wkhtmltopdf project (http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/) which basically takes the Webkit HTML engine and generates a print out from that.

The documentation instructs you put the FE plugin on a new page, and then add a short TS into you TS Setup. I thought I’d post my TS setup here for example on how to use it slightly different (mostly since I wanted to have the current page title as filename). Note that I’m forwarding the PDF link to a ts object – lib.pdfLink. I’ve mapped that in an FCE with links in my case. Instead of adding the FE plugin on a separate page I include it on all pages (last row in TS) – since I need the ouput possibility on most pages anyway.

Additional notes:

I just realized that the CSS attribute page-break-after/before is a bit kinky with the pdf converter (actually it’s the webkit engine, and Firefox has the same problem. I didn’t bother to check if IE suffers from the same, but I guess it does…).
If you want to break a page somewhere, then make sure the page break doesn’t reside in floated elements. This is a bit tricky since a modern HTML template normally consists of floated divs and by that there is no natural position for such page break. This was fairly easy to solve for me in my current case since I really didn’t need the other columns in my output. Therefore I could first set the divs like:

I made a small FCE in TYPO3 containing a div with class .pagebreak, which I could insert anywhere on a page. It’s hidden in media screen, but breaks the page when printing. Pritty nifty if you ask me

One big downside I feel currently is the template setup. It’s heavily templated, but still not really as flexible as I’d like. Could be a competence/knowledge issue – but nah! I’m smart! really..

However I’ve had some real troubles showing the prices. Really. Seems so basic, but I just couldn’t get into it. Today I logged into the #typo3 channel @ freenode irc. Thanks to friendly help from PiMB there I got it working. It all had to do with setting the currency. I ended up with this in my TS:

The default for ..pi1.currency was – “currency” – and not a real currency – like SEK or EUR. That’s all. the other FE commerce plugings actually has EUR as default.

Anyway. by this post I’d like to state that the open source community is (at least around TYPO3) very friendly and helpsome. – and – thanks PiMP for the hint

The site – still in a bit of progress (have some wierd positioning in the templates) – can be found here (swedish) http://www.byylva.se/. High quality carpets and other textiles

cheers. And a happy new Year!

RTE.default.proc.typohead = 0

But that just disables the use of typohead right off, breaking all current content on the site. And when reading a bit more I realised that what I really wanted was to use another transformation method than the default set for tinyrte;

RTE.default.proc.overruleMode = ts_css

This nicely allows the typohead tags stored in DB to be there, get transformed to Hx when opened with the rte and then when saved, never seen again

The overruleMode sets the general transformation mode that the rte should use, and afaik ts_css is to be the modern way of transforming data. The ts_css mode is actually a meta mode for a bunch of transformation rules. See the RTE reference for in depth know how about that.

//TSFILE

and type the same on the first line in you ts file. The next time you open it, it will highlight your code.  Simple and effective.

What this actually does when put in you TS template (together with the rest of the localization settings) is saying that TYPO3 should softly and nicely merge the image and header fields of a content element if it’s not translated into the other translated materials.

Go TYPO3 I say

This got me to css_filelinks. A nice way to modify most appearance aspects of filelinks. I think it’s actually a good example of how T3 can be modified by behaviour and function.
Anyway, with that one you can change the FE (FrontEnd) display to your likening with a template/marker styled way. Instead of displaying ###TITLE### (filename) I choosed to use the description field that you can add in the filelinks setting.

Configuration reference: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/css_filelinks/0.2.11/view/1/3/

Requirements/parts:
jEdit installed with Typo3 plugin
Typo3 version 3.8> (known to work up to 4.0.1)
xml support in PHP
Typo3 extensions: xmlrpc_lib and jeditvfs.

The following steps helps you set up the environment correctly:

1) Install xmlrpc_lib and jeditvfs to Typo3 with Typo3 extension manager.
It should work out of the box, but you can, if you like to, add some custom TS settings:

2) download and install jEdit from
jedit.org

3) Start jEdit and go to menu Plugins -> Plugin manager and then the install tab. Check TypoScript for Typo3 and install.

4) Now add a new Typo3 site. Close the Plugins manager and go to menu Plugins -> Plugin options. Select TypoScript and then the + button to add a new site.

5) Close the Plugin options window and go to menu Plugins -> TypoScript for Typo3 -> Template browser. Double click on your website name and voila – your in the game!