Joomla! Documentation™

Tobias Zulauf - zero24

I'm a specialist for system integration in Germany. I'm involved with Joomla! since 2011.

• tobias.zulauf[at]community.joomla.org
• https://www.jah-tz.de
• https://github.com/zero-24
• https://volunteers.joomla.org/joomlers/tobias-zulauf

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How to use custom fields in your overrides

Introduction

The real power of custom fields is that you can use it in your own overrides. Here is a example of how you can do that.

Getting custom fields in your override

Basically you have all the custom fields corresponding to the current item accessible via a new property in your $item variable called jcfields. The $item->jcfields property is a array that holds the following data per field, where one field looks like this example:

Array
(
    [4] => stdClass Object
        (
            [id] => 4
            [title] => article-editor
            [name] => article-editor
            [checked_out] => 0
            [checked_out_time] => 0000-00-00 00:00:00
            [note] => 
            [state] => 1
            [access] => 1
            [created_time] => 2017-04-07 12:08:59
            [created_user_id] => 856
            [ordering] => 0
            [language] => *
            [fieldparams] => Joomla\Registry\Registry Object
                (
                    [data:protected] => stdClass Object
                        (
                            [buttons] => 
                            [width] => 
                            [height] => 
                            [filter] => 
                        )

                    [initialized:protected] => 1
                    [separator] => .
                )

            [params] => Joomla\Registry\Registry Object
                (
                    [data:protected] => stdClass Object
                        (
                            [hint] => 
                            [render_class] => 
                            [class] => 
                            [showlabel] => 1
                            [disabled] => 0
                            [readonly] => 0
                            [show_on] => 
                            [display] => 2
                        )

                    [initialized:protected] => 1
                    [separator] => .
                )

            [type] => editor
            [default_value] => 
            [context] => com_content.article
            [group_id] => 0
            [label] => article-editor
            [description] => 
            [required] => 0
            [language_title] => 
            [language_image] => 
            [editor] => 
            [access_level] => Public
            [author_name] => Super User
            [group_title] => 
            [group_access] => 
            [group_state] => 
            [value] => Bar
            [rawvalue] => Bar
        )

)

Render the field using the FieldsHelper

To render the field you can use FieldsHelper::render() by passing the needed values.

/**
 * Renders the layout file and data on the context and does a fall back to
 * Fields afterwards.
 *
 * @param   string  $context      The context of the content passed to the helper
 * @param   string  $layoutFile   layoutFile
 * @param   array   $displayData  displayData
 *
 * @return  NULL|string
 *
 * @since  3.7.0
 */
public static function render($context, $layoutFile, $displayData)

Example code for the override using the FieldsHelper

// Load the FieldsHelper
<?php JLoader::register('FieldsHelper', JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR . '/components/com_fields/helpers/fields.php'); ?>

<?php foreach ($this->item->jcfields as $field) : ?>
	// Render the field using the fields render method
	<?php echo FieldsHelper::render($field->context, 'field.render', array('field' => $field)); ?>
<?php endforeach ?>

Example code for a raw override

<?php foreach ($this->item->jcfields as $field) : ?>
	// Render the field using the fields render method
	<?php echo $field->label . ':' . $field->value; ?>
<?php endforeach ?>

$item->jcfields does not contain the fields I need

The jcfields property is generated using the plugin event onContentPrepare by passing the context of the fields. The fields plugin than reads the fields from the database and adds the values to the jcfields property.

So please make sure that the component you use also implements the onContentPrepare event with the context you use for the fields.

If you use the core components this should work out of the box.