Containers

Introduction | Product Macros | Category Macros | Content Macros | Menu Macros | Navigation Macros

Introduction

Containers are HTML snippets or templates which define how to display an O3 object like a product, category, menu or content-item.

They are very simple. If you're building your site from a template - which most people are - you just copy the HTML which displays the product (or whatever) from the template into O3, then replace any specific stuff with O3's container symbols.

Most things in O3 have 2 types of container: a List container - to use when showing a list of things, and a Detail container for sowing all an object's attributes. This applies to Products, Categories, Items, Content and Schedules. Menus & Navigation don't ned this distinction.

The benefit of using containers that it gives you complete control over your site design. Also, if you decide to change how things are displayed, you only have to change it in one place - O3's Containers Manager. Containers are essential if you want to use the Products-Wizard functions and the Catalog Page. The set of default containers is defined in the settings, but you can override the defaults by passing the container name into the function calls.

There are examples of containers in the example data set. Here's a simple product container:

<!-- Product Container - Small -->
<table class='prsmall'>
<tr><th>PR-NAME</th></tr>
<tr><td align='center'><a href='PR-URL' title="Go to the PR-NAME page..."><img src='PR-IMAGE' border='0'></a></td></tr>
<tr><td>PR-DESC</td></tr>
<tr><th>£PR-PRICE</th></tr>
<tr><th>PR-PPBUYhttps://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but02.gif#</th></tr>
</table>

...and here is how the container is used:

echo show_product($item, 'Container');

Other Containers

This section lists some of the core containers in O3. The Order Confirmation Email Containers is also part of the core.

Some modules have containers too. There are: Schedule Containers, Content Containers, and Item Containers.

Product Container Macros

Here's a list of all the symbols which can be used in O3's product containers, and what they're replaced with.

Category Container Macros

Here's a list of all the symbols which can be used in O3's category containers, and what they're replaced with.

Content Container Macros

Here's a list of all the symbols which can be used in O3's content containers, and what they're replaced with.

Hint: If you want a product to appear in the small container, use the CN-PRODUCTS-NAME macro, and specify the products name exactly in the regular expression

Menu Container Macros

Here's a list of all the symbols which can be used in O3's menu containers, and what they're replaced with.

Navigation Container Macros

Here's a list of all the symbols which can be used in O3's navigation containers, and what they're replaced with.