Creating Blocks

Introduction

Adding blocks should stem from your child theme and be included in your seeds so that the original theme structure can be restored if needed. Follow the Seeding Themes documentation to seed your alterations to the blocks. You can edit the blueprints directly in the app/blueprints folder, but it's not recommended if you plan on updating the theme.

From this point forward, it is assumed that you are creating blueprints in your seeds folder and seeding it from there.

Adding Your block to The Builder

Adding your block to the builder and columns group

To add your block to the builder group, you'll first need to create your own mixin content blocks within the seeds/blueprints/content/mixins/builder/ folder.

The following assumes you created a custom_block folder inside the above folder. This folder should contain the following files

custom_block_column.yaml

Used for the Section builder column blocks

uuid: #Your Unique UUID
handle: Content\CustomBlockColumn
type: mixin
name: Custom Block Column
fields:
  :
    type: mixin
    label: Column Header
    source: Content\ColumnHeader
  :
    type: mixin
    source: Content\CustomBlockCommonFields
  hr_1:
    type: ruler
  :
    type: mixin
    source: Content\ColumnOptions

custom_block_common.yaml

Common fields used within the Section & Column Blocks

uuid: #Your Unique UUID
handle: Content\CustomBlockCommonFields
type: mixin
name: Common Event Fields
fields:
  #Your Fields Here...

custom_block.yaml

Used for to create a Top Level Section block

uuid: #Your Unique UUID
handle: Content\CustomBlock
type: mixin
name: Events
fields:
  :
    type: mixin
    source: Content\SectionHeader
  :
    type: mixin
    source: Content\CustomBlockCommonFields
  :
    type: mixin
    source: Content\AdvancedFields
    label: Advanced Settings
    tab: Advanced

Once you've created your custom block blueprint files, you'll need to add them to the Section and Column areas which are in the builder.yaml and section.yaml blueprint files respectfully

builder.yaml

uuid: 78650dea-607e-4c63-bde8-2364cb786072
handle: Content\Builder
type: mixin
name: Builder

fields:
  builder:
    type: repeater
    label: Builder
    displayMode: builder
    span: adaptive
    prompt: Add a Block
    groups:
      #...
      custom_block:
        name: Custom Block
        icon: icon-toggle-on
        description: Your Custom Block Description
        titleFrom: title
        useTabs: true
        fields:
          hero:
            type: mixin
            source: Content\CustomBlock

section.yaml

uuid: 1be4d611-a49d-11ed-9116-3a678152e91c
handle: Content\Section
type: mixin
name: Section
fields:
  section_header:
    type: mixin
    source: Content\SectionHeader
    tab: General
  reverse_columns_on_mobile:
    label: Reverse Columns on Mobile
    comment: Useful if you have content that needs to be stacked a different way on a phone.
    type: switch
    tab: General
  hr_1:
    type: ruler
    tab: General
  columns:
    label: Content
    type: repeater
    commentAbove: Create content for this section. Each content block uses it's own column. Max of 4 per section.
    span: full
    displayMode: builder
    tab: General
    groups:
      #...
      custom_column_block:
        name: Custom Block
        icon: icon-toggle-on
        description: Your Custom Block Description
        titleFrom: title
        fields:
          custom_column_block:
            type: mixin
            source: Content\CustomBlock
      #...

Once done, you should see your block within the builder after you run:

php artisan october:migrate

Displaying Block Content

Awesome, your block is in the builder. Now it's time to render it's content. You'll need to create some partials under builder/sections and builder/columns to prep the content for rendering.

builder/sections/custom_block.htm

<{{ section.html_tag == "default" ? "section" : section.html_tag }} 
        {{ section.html_anchor|length ? 'id="' ~  section.html_anchor  ~ '"' }}
        class="{% if section.css_classes|length %}
                    {% for class in section.css_classes|split(',') %}
                        {{ class ~ ' ' }}
                    {% endfor %}
               {% endif %}
               {{ section.style == 'light' ? 'bg-light' }} 
               {{ section.style == 'dark' ? 'bg-dark text-white' }} 
               {{ section.disable_top_spacing == true ? 'pt-0' : "pt-4" }} 
               {{ section.disable_bottom_spacing == true ? 'pb-0' : "pb-4" }}"
>
    <div class="{{ section.container_style }}">
        Hello World!
    </div>
</{{ section.html_tag == "default" ? "section" : section.html_tag }}>

The snippet above includes all the extra Advanced Tab content to get you started.

Next up, creating the column block

builder/columns/custom_block.htm

Hello World!

The columns block doesn't depend on any content inside of it, so you can initialize it without any extra content

Adding the blocks to the pages

Now that you've created the blocks, time to reference them in their respective sections

builder/items.htm

{# ... #}
{# Custom Block #}
{% if section.content_group ==  %}
    {% partial 'builder/sections/hero'  %}
{% endif %}

builder/sections/section.htm

    {# ... #}
    <div class="{{ section.container_style }}">
        <div class="row row-cols-lg-{{ section.columns|length }} row-cols-1 mx-auto {{ section.reverse_columns_on_mobile ? 'flex-lg-row flex-column-reverse' }}">
            {% for column in section.columns %}
                <div class="col {{ column.disable_bottom_spacing == true ? 'mb-0' : 'mb-5' }} {{ column.position }} {{ column.width|length ? "col-lg-" ~ column.width : '12' }}">
                    
                    {# ... #}

                    {# Custom Column Group #}
                    {% if column.content_group ==  %}
                        {% partial 'builder/columns/form'  %}
                    {% endif %}
                    
                    {# ... #}
                </div>
            {% endfor %}
        </div>
    </div>

That's it! You've successfully created a custom block. It's a good idea to use folders to organize all your custom blocks.