Concepts

Fluid Powered TYPO3: Concepts

Introduction

This section of the documentation explains all concepts used in the extensions provided by the Fluid Powered TYPO3 team.

You will find details about the following concepts - the further down the list you go, the more advanced the concepts get. When you start off using Fluid Powered TYPO3, you will likely only need to know a few of these concepts. But the more you use the extensions, the more likely it is you will at some point want/need to use other concepts.

The information is in-depth; if you are just now starting, then you should start with the Beginner's Guide and come back to this section if and when you need more detailed information about the concepts covered in that guide.

Table of contents

• Provider Extensions Is where you will find information about the preferred, always-recommended template storage: TYPO3 extensions which contain the templates your site should use.
• Templates Is where you find the low-down on how Fluid templates are used by Fluid Powered TYPO3.
• Flux Forms Is all about the forms you can make with Flux - different ways to create them, how they work together with TYPO3, understanding the structure of forms and how the different components fit together.
• Flux Controllers Is a chapter dedicated to explaining how a Flux-enabled Extbase controller differs from a standard Extbase controller and how it opens up the Flux API for more customised uses.
• Providers Deals with the special class pattern called Providers - classes which provide data and manipulation for one very specific type of record - fx triggering on and then processing a tt_content record which has CType set to myspecialtype when saved; and much, much more - this concept is, together with the Flux Forms concept, the very core that allows Flux to do what it does.
• Outlets and Pipes Since Flux 7.0.0. Is dedicated to a special concept which can be used as standalone or in connection with a Flux Controller or Provider. In all its simplicity it two special types of classes which when put together, routes and processes data through a series of input and output Pipes to validate, convert, manipulate, store, send, log, publish (and more!) data from any source to any output.

API levels

The handful or so of concepts that Flux introduces can be divided into levels, each level increasing the complexity and also the flexibility. The documents in this section of the documentation mention the API level of a feature - here is what those levels mean:

1. The outer layer, layer 1: ViewHelpers, TypoScript, template files. Low complexity. Basically this layer contains form field setups, configuration and rendering and is the simplest layer. It is used by site integrators to influence where to look for template files, for example. And by template designers and developers to define a collection of form fields that are available when editing custom content elements, pages, etc.
2. The inner layer, layer 2: Classes, Controllers, Services - "internals". Medium complexity. The more advanced ways you can integrate with Flux are opened up in PHP - they are (generally speaking) not available to be used through TypoScript or in Fluid templates. Since this layer uses PHP only, it requires a fair bit of knowledge about making Extbase classes (or a brain tuned perfectly to learning by example, because there are plenty examples in Fluid Powered TYPO3's extensions in the form of features like fluidpages).
3. The core layer, bottom layer: For experienced developers. High to very high complexity. This layer is normally one you never have to touch. There are almost no features as such at this layer, but there are ways to influence Flux's logic in very advanced ways.

You can build very advanced sites using only layer 1 features like fluidcontent, vhs and fluidpages. You can make some advanced extensions using layer 2 features like Providers and Outlets/Pipes. And finally you can manipulate almost everything integrated in layer 1 and layer 2 by practicing the dark arts of the bottom layer.

In daily work though, we don't speak of API levels as such - we simply mention the integration context (template, controller, TypoScript, etc). However, it is used in this section of the documentation to give you a very fast way to see how difficult it would be to learn and to use a certain feature at your skill level.