shortcodes.md

Shortcodes

One of the most common operations for plugin developers is defining shortcodes. Arc has a fluent way to do this to make the code a little more expressive:

Defining Shortcodes

To define a shortcode we use the Arc\Shortcode\Shortcodes object like this:

namespace Vendor\Plugin\Providers;

use Arc\Shortcode\Shortcodes;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class ShortcodeProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function boot(Activation $activation)
    {
        // Register the plugin's shortcodes
        $this->app
            ->make(Shortcodes::class)
            ->code('my-shortcode')
            ->rendersView('shortcodes.my-shortcode')
            ->code('my-other-shortcode')
            ->rendersView('shortcodes.my-other-shortcode')
            ->register();
    }
}

In the above example we are performing the task of dependency injection by using the make method provided by the Illuminate IoC container ($this->app) to automatically instantiate the Shortcodes class without worrying about it's dependencies.

Shortcode Views

When you define a shortcode with the rendersView() fluent method, you can pass the name of a blade view into the method to define what html is output when the shortcode is used on the website. For example, if you have a view located in a file called /resources/views/task/create.blade.php you could make the shortcode render that view like so:

$shortcodes->code('create-task')
    ->renderView('task.create');

If you would like to pass a variable for use in that view, you can do so in the second parameter of renderView().

$shortcodes->code('create-task')
    ->renderView('task.create', [
        'projects' => $myProjects
    ]);

The above would make a variable valled $projects available in the view which would be set to the value of $myProjects.

Shortcode Attributes

When you define a shortcode which renders a view, that view will have available it three variables automatically as well as any additional parameters which you passed in via the second argument of renderView():

$attributes, $content and $shortcodeName

For example, suppose we define a shortcode called my-shortcode which renders a view located in /resources/views/shortcodes/my-shortcode.blade.php. and pass in an attribute called foo like so:

$shortcodes->code('my-shortcode')->renderView('shortcodes.my-shortcode');

And then on the page pass in an attribute called foo with a value of "bar":

[my-shortcode foo="bar"] Some content here [/my-shortcode]

Then in the view template /resources/views/shortcodes/my-shortcode.blade.php we will have access to the following variables:

$shortcodeName = 'my-shortcode';
$content = ' Some content here ';
$attributes = ['foo' => 'bar'];