ContentTypes / Introduction

Note: You are currently reading the documentation for Bolt 3.7. Looking for the documentation for Bolt 5.2 instead?

All content in Bolt is stored in the database in a logical and flexible fashion. In general, when you're building a website, you have an idea what kind of content you're going to be managing with the website. Most websites have some sort of 'pages' for generic stuff like 'about us' or 'Company History'.

Most websites will also have some form of news-like items, that are shown based on the date that they were published. Some other sites might have 'book reviews' or 'event dates' or even completely different content. All of these different types of content are called ContentTypes in Bolt, and you can add as many different ContentTypes as you need.

Each ContentType is made up of Fields, you can read more about Fields and what fields are available in the Fields Definition section.

All content on your website is part of one specific ContentType, which automatically defines which fields that piece of content has, which in turn specifies how that piece of content is structured. Each one of those pieces of content is called a Record, and is stored in the database. For example, a single 'event' is a Record of ContentType 'events' and a single 'page' is a Record of ContentType 'pages'.

When you're creating a page on a website that shows listings of several Records, you're using an Array of Records. For instance, if you create a page that has 'the five latest events', you'll be using an Array of 5 'event' Records of ContentType 'events'.

Before we'll dive into the details, we'll give you a quick example of a simple ContentType, how it's stored, and how you can access it in templates to display on your site.

An Example: News items¶

In this example, we'll create a very simple ContentType for news items. Each news item will have a title, an image, and some text. We'll also be using some of the fixed Fields, like the slug, the ownerid and the various dates.

Note: If you've just installed Bolt, you might not have the contenttypes.yml-file yet. You will however have a contenttypes.yml.dist-file in that same folder. The first time Bolt is run, the .yml.dist-files will be automatically copied to .yml-files. If you wish to do some configuration before you first run Bolt, just copy contenttypes.yml.dist to contenttypes.yml yourself.

To add this ContentType, edit the file app/config/contenttypes.yml, and add the following to the bottom or top of the file:

news:
    name: News
    singular_name: News Item
    fields:
        title:
            type: text
            class: large
        slug:
            type: slug
            uses: title
        image:
            type: image
        text:
            type: html
            height: 300px
    record_template: newsitem.twig

Note: This file is in the YAML format, which means that the indentation is important. Make sure you leave leading spaces intact.

This creates a new ContentType 'news'. Its name is 'News', and a single record is named 'News Item'. We've defined fields for 'title', 'slug', 'image' and 'text'. The 'record_template' defines the default template to use, when displaying a single record in the browser.

After you've saved the file and refresh the Dashboard screen in your browser, you'll be greeted by a warning that the Database needs to be updated. If we do this, the new ContentType will be added to the database, with the fields that we defined in our contenttypes.yml file.

Tip: The Bolt backend is located at /bolt, relative from the 'home' location of your website.

When you go to Configuration > Check Database, the database will be updated, and you'll be given the option to add some "Lorem Ipsum" Records to the newly created ContentType. If you do this, and go back to the dashboard, you'll see your new ContentType with some example news items. Sweet!

Note:In the following examples we're going to tell you to make modifications to the default `base-2016` theme. This is actually a very bad practice, and if you're going to make your own theme, make a copy of the `base-2016` theme, and do your modifications in the copy.

To add a listing of these news items to the website, edit the twig template theme/base-2016/index.twig. Most likely, it'll contain an include for a header and some other things. Add the following to the HTML-code, preferably somewhere below the header section:

{% setcontent newsitems = "news/latest/4" %}

{% for newsitem in newsitems %}
<article>
    <h2><a href="{{ newsitem.link }}">{{ newsitem.title }}</a></h2>

    {{ newsitem.excerpt }}

    <p class="meta"><a href="{{ newsitem.link }}">Link</a> -
    Posted by {{ newsitem.user.displayname }}
    on {{ newsitem.datecreated|date("M d, ’y")}}</p>

</article>
{% endfor %}

Most of the above example will seem pretty straightforward, but all of the specific template tags are explained in detail in the chapter about Content in templates.

When you refresh the front page of the website, you should see four news items listed on the page. You can click the title to go to the news item on a separate page, but it will use the default record.twig template. In the ContentType we defined the template as newsitem.twig, but it doesn't exist. Create the file in the theme/base-2016/ folder, and add the following HTML-code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>{{ newsitem.title }}</title>
</head>

<body>

    <article>

        <h1><a href="{{ newsitem.link }}">{{ newsitem.title }}</a></h1>

        {% if content.image!="" %}
            <div class='imageholder'><img src="{{ newsitem.image|thumbnail(480, 480) }}"></div>
        {% endif %}

        {{ newsitem.text }}

        <p class="meta"><a href="{{ newsitem.link }}">Link</a> -
            Posted by {{ newsitem.user.displayname }}
            on {{ newsitem.datecreated|date("M d, ’y")}}</p>

    </article>
</body>
</html>

Tip: If you're curious about the different {{ tags }} in this bit of code, read the Template documentation.

In the frontend of the website, in your templates, all content is accessible as an array. If you're accessing one record, it will be an array containing the fields, taxonomies and metadata. If you're accessing a set of records, it will be an array of arrays. I.e. {{ page.title }} for the title of a page or {{ events.4.date }} for the date of the fourth event in an array.

If you're building a template and are unsure of what a certain variable contains or how the fields are named, use {{ dump(foo) }}, where 'foo' is the name of your record or array.

This is explained in detail in the section The structure of a Record.

Defining ContentTypes¶

The ContentTypes in Bolt are defined in the file app/config/contenttypes.yml. You can edit this file directly, or from within the Bolt interface under Configuration > ContentTypes. Each distinct group of content can have its own ContentType, to enable the user to store the content as needed. Fields can be added later on, and settings can be changed, so nothing is set in stone.

The general structure of each ContentType is:

name:
    option: value
    option: value
    option: value
    ..

The name defines the name of the ContentType, and it should be a 'safe' version of the name: option below. Basically this means that it should be a lowercase version, without any special characters. Like this:

pages:
    name: Pages
    singular_name: Page
    ..

cafes:
    name: Cafés
    singular_name: Café
    ..

The available options are:

Note: A ContentType slug or name may not start with a double underscore. A field key may not contain a double underscore. Those names are reserved for internal use.

Automatic titles versus title_format¶

As you might have noticed in the screenshots above or in the Bolt backend itself, Records in listing overviews and in the "Recently edited" panel are always shown with a linked title. Even if the ContentType does not actually have a field named title, Bolt will make a reasonable assumption as to what the "Title" should be. By using title_format you can override this, if Bolt doesn't provide correct titles for a ContentType.

Singleton ContentTypes¶

You can set the option to create a Singleton ContentType, which basically is a ContentType that only contains exactly one record. For example, you can create a Singleton where you can store the site's social media links and basic contact info, that you can then use globally in your templates. Another common usecase is for a logical place to put the "Homepage" content.

More details and examples can be found in Making a Singleton ContentType.

Grouping ContentTypes in the sidebar¶

If you have a larger number of ContentTypes, the siebar in Bolt's backend might look too cluttered. To make your the sidebar tidier, you can group several ContentTypes together in the sidebar menu, using the show_in_menu option.

For example:

entries:
    name: Entries
    …
    show_in_menu: false

showcases:
    name: Showcases
    …
    show_in_menu: false

The result of this example, is shown in the following screenshot:

Tip: If you provide a name, like show_in_menu: Foo, then that name will be used, instead of the generic "Other content" label.

The structure of a Record¶

Every record is an object, that contains the information of that record, as well as some meta-information and its taxonomy.

At the topmost level, it contains the following items:

The values contain the fields that are defined in the ContentType, together with a few other fixed fields. The fixed fields are:

If you're building a template and are unsure of what a certain variable contains or how the fields are named, use {{ dump(foo) }}, where 'foo' is the name of your record or array. In most templates, {{ dump(record) }} will work as a generic fallback for whatever the name of your record is.

For detailed information on how to access the various fields and values in your templates, see the Twig tags, filters & functions page.

Advanced: YAML Repeated Nodes¶

In order to make your ContentType definitions more compact, and consistent, you can use YAML repeated nodes. Bolt has a special YAML key called __nodes that it will use only for repeated nodes, and not create a ContentType or table for. These nodes then become selectable in a ContentType definition.

Each node is defined by an key_name: &node_name with the fields then included, and indented below.

## Defaults nodes. Does not create a ContentType
__nodes:
    record_defaults: &record_defaults
        title:
            type: text
            class: large
            group: main
        slug:
            type: slug
            uses: title
    content_defaults: &content_defaults
        image:
            type: image
            attrib: title
        body:
            type: html
            height: 300px
            group: content
    template_defaults: &template_defaults
        template:
            type: templateselect
            filter: '*.twig'
            group: meta

In the above example, we have the record_defaults node that defines title and slug fields, a content_defaults node that defines the image and body fields, and a template_defaults node that defines our template selector.

Using the above nodes we could simplify a default Pages ContentType to look like this:

pages:
    name: Pages
    singular_name: Page
    fields:
        <<: *record_defaults
        teaser:
            type: html
            height: 150px
        <<: *content_defaults
        <<: *template_defaults
    taxonomy: [ chapters ]
    recordsperpage: 100

Keeping fields together in a group¶

If you have defined groups in a YAML repeated node, you can add a field from a specific ContentType to one of these groups.

In the example below, the slider field will appear in the tab media.

Example:

__nodes:
    record_defaults: &record_defaults
        title:
            type: text
            class: large
            group: main
        slug:
            type: slug
            uses: title
    content_defaults: &content_defaults
        image:
            type: image
            group: media
(...)

pages:
    name: Pages
    singular_name: Page
    fields:
        <<: *record_defaults
        slider:
            type: imagelist
            group: media
(...)