15. Volto view component: A default view for a "Talk" – Mastering Plone 6 development

Volto view component: A default view for a "Talk"

15. Volto view component: A default view for a "Talk"#

In this part we will:

Create a view to display a talk
Register a React view component for content type talk
Write the view component

Tools and techniques covered:

View for a content type
Displaying data stored in fields of a content type
React Basics

Frontend chapter

Checkout volto-ploneconf at tag "overrides":

git checkout overrides

The code at the end of the chapter:

git checkout talkview

More info in The code for the training

15.1. Creating and registering a new view component#

The default visualization for the new content type talk lists the field values according to the type schema.

To show the talk data in a nice way, display the speaker portrait and add some components, we create a custom view for type talk.

In the folder frontend you need to add a new file packages/volto-ploneconf/src/components/Views/Talk.jsx. Create the folder Views first.

As a first step, the file will hold only a placeholder. A view is a React component. So we write a component function that just returns the info about what it will be.

const TalkView = (props) => {
  return <div>I am the TalkView component!</div>;
};

export default TalkView;

Also add a convenience import of the new component to src/components/index.js:

import TalkView from './Views/Talk';

export { TalkView };

This is a common practice and allows to import the new view component as import { TalkView } from './components'; instead of import { TalkView } from './components/Views/Talk';.

Now register the new component as the default view for talks in packages/volto-ploneconfig/src/index.js.

import { TalkView } from './components';

const applyConfig = (config) => {
  config.views = {
    ...config.views,
    contentTypesViews: {
      ...config.views.contentTypesViews,
      talk: TalkView,
    },
  };
  return config;
};

export default applyConfig;

This extends the Volto default setting config.views.contentTypesViews with the key/value pair talk: TalkView.
It uses the spread syntax to take the default settings and overrides what needs to be overridden.

A restarted Volto (with make start) picks up these configuration modifications and displays the placeholder in place of the previously used default view.

15.2. Enhancing the view#

Now we're improving this view step by step. First we reuse the component DefaultView.jsx in our custom view:

import { DefaultView } from '@plone/volto/components';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  return <DefaultView {...props} />;
};
export default TalkView;

We will now add the content from the field details after the DefaultView.

import { DefaultView } from '@plone/volto/components';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  return (
    <>
      <DefaultView {...props} />
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: props.content.details.data }} />
    </>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

<> </> is a fragment. The return value of React needs to be one single element.
The variable props receives data from the parent component. As the TalkView component is registered as a content type view, it receives the content data and some more. We will use the content part. So we introduce a constant content to be more explicit.
content.details is the value of the RichText field details with mime type, encoding and the data:
```
{
  'content-type': 'text/html',
  data: '<p>foo bar...</p>',
  encoding: 'utf8'
};
```
See Serialization.
content.details.data holds the raw HTML. To render it, we use dangerouslySetInnerHTML (see https://legacy.reactjs.org/docs/dom-elements.html#dangerouslysetinnerhtml).

Please check the 'components' tab of Google developer tools for property content of the TalkView component to see the field values of your talk instance.

The result isn't beautiful, because the text sticks to the left border of the page. You need to wrap it in a Container to get the same styling as the content of DefaultView:

import { Container as SemanticContainer } from 'semantic-ui-react';
import { DefaultView } from '@plone/volto/components';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  return (
    <>
      <DefaultView {...props} />
      <Container>
        <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: props.content.details.data }} />
      </Container>
    </>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

Container is either a registered component or a component from Semantic UI React and needs to be imported before it is used.

We now decide to display the type of talk in the title (for example: "Keynote: The Future of Plone"). This means we cannot use DefaultView anymore since that displays the title like this: <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">{content.title}</h1>. Instead we display the title and description in a custom way.

This has multiple benefits:

All content can now be wrapped in the same Container which cleans up the HTML.
We can control where the speaker portrait is displayed. We can now move all information on the speaker into a separate box. The speaker portrait is picked up by the DefaultView because the fields name is image, which is the same as the image from the behavior plone.leadimage.

import { Container as SemanticContainer } from 'semantic-ui-react';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const { content } = props;
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  return (
    <Container id="view-wrapper talk-view">
      <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">
        <span className="type_of_talk">{content.type_of_talk.token}: </span>
        {content.title}
      </h1>
      {content.description && (
        <p className="documentDescription">{content.description}</p>
      )}
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: content.details.data }} />
    </Container>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

content.type_of_talk is the value from the choice field type_of_talk: {token: "training", title: null}. We display the token. Later on we will map the tokens to titles with vocabularies.
The && in {content.description && (<p>...</p>)} makes sure, that this paragraph is only rendered, if the talk actually has a description.

Next we add a segment with info on the speaker:

import {
  Container as SemanticContainer,
  Header,
  Segment,
} from 'semantic-ui-react';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const { content } = props;
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  return (
    <Container id="view-wrapper talk-view">
      <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">
        <span className="type_of_talk">{content.type_of_talk.token}: </span>
        {content.title}
      </h1>
      {content.description && (
        <p className="documentDescription">{content.description}</p>
      )}
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: content.details.data }} />
      <Segment clearing>
        {content.speaker && <Header dividing>{content.speaker}</Header>}
        <p>{content.company || content.website}</p>
        {content.email && (
          <p>
            Email: <a href={`mailto:${content.email}`}>{content.email}</a>
          </p>
        )}
        {content.speaker_biography && (
          <div
            dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
              __html: content.speaker_biography.data,
            }}
          />
        )}
      </Segment>
    </Container>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

We use the component Segment for the box.
{`mailto:${content.email}`} is a template literal

Next we add the image:

import {
  Container as SemanticContainer,
  Header,
  Image,
  Segment,
} from 'semantic-ui-react';
import { flattenToAppURL } from '@plone/volto/helpers';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const { content } = props;
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  return (
    <Container id="view-wrapper talk-view">
      <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">
        <span className="type_of_talk">{content.type_of_talk.token}: </span>
        {content.title}
      </h1>
      {content.description && (
        <p className="documentDescription">{content.description}</p>
      )}
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: content.details.data }} />
      <Segment clearing>
        {content.speaker && <Header dividing>{content.speaker}</Header>}
        <p>{content.company || content.website}</p>
        {content.email && (
          <p>
            Email: <a href={`mailto:${content.email}`}>{content.email}</a>
          </p>
        )}
        <Image
          src={flattenToAppURL(content.image?.scales?.preview?.download)}
          size="small"
          floated="right"
          alt={content.speaker}
          avatar
        />
        {content.speaker_biography && (
          <div
            dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
              __html: content.speaker_biography.data,
            }}
          />
        )}
      </Segment>
    </Container>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

We use the Semantic UI component Image
We use flattenToAppURL to turn the Plone URL of the image to the Volto URL, for example it turns http://localhost:8080/Plone/talks/dexterity-for-the-win/@@images/9fb3d165-82f4-4ffa-804f-2afe1bad8124.jpeg into http://localhost:3000/talks/dexterity-for-the-win/@@images/9fb3d165-82f4-4ffa-804f-2afe1bad8124.jpeg.
Open the React Developer Tools in your browser and inspect the property content of the TalkView component, its attribute image and its attribute scales. If you look at the documentation for the serialization of image-fields you can find out where that information comes from.
To deal with talks without speaker image, we check for the existence of the image with content.image?.scales?.preview?.download. The expression with question marks returns undefined if content has no image key or content.image has no scales key and so forth. ?. is the optional chaining operator.

Next we add the audience:

import {
  Container as SemanticContainer,
  Header,
  Image,
  Label,
  Segment,
} from 'semantic-ui-react';
import { flattenToAppURL } from '@plone/volto/helpers';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const { content } = props;
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  const color_mapping = {
    beginner: 'green',
    advanced: 'yellow',
    professional: 'purple',
  };
  return (
    <Container id="view-wrapper talk-view">
      <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">
        <span className="type_of_talk">{content.type_of_talk.token}: </span>
        {content.title}
      </h1>
      {content.description && (
        <p className="documentDescription">{content.description}</p>
      )}
      {content.audience?.map((item) => {
        let color = color_mapping[item.token] || 'green';
        return (
          <Label key={item.token} color={color}>
            {item.token}
          </Label>
        );
      })}
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: content.details.data }} />
      <Segment clearing>
        {content.speaker && <Header dividing>{content.speaker}</Header>}
        <p>{content.company || content.website}</p>
        {content.email && (
          <p>
            Email: <a href={`mailto:${content.email}`}>{content.email}</a>
          </p>
        )}
        <Image
          src={flattenToAppURL(content.image?.scales?.preview?.download)}
          size="small"
          floated="right"
          alt={content.speaker}
          avatar
        />
        {content.speaker_biography && (
          <div
            dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
              __html: content.speaker_biography.data,
            }}
          />
        )}
      </Segment>
    </Container>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

With {content.audience?.map(item => {...})} we iterate over the individual values of the choice field audience if that exists.
map is used to iterate over the array audience using an Arrow-function (=>) in which item is one item in audience.
The item is an Object like {'title': null, 'token': 'advanced'}.
We map the available field values to colors and use green as a fallback.

As a last step we show the last few fields website and company, github and twitter:

import {
  Container as SemanticContainer,
  Header,
  Image,
  Label,
  Segment,
} from 'semantic-ui-react';
import { flattenToAppURL } from '@plone/volto/helpers';
import config from '@plone/volto/registry';

const TalkView = (props) => {
  const { content } = props;
  const Container =
    config.getComponent({ name: 'Container' }).component || SemanticContainer;
  const color_mapping = {
    beginner: 'green',
    advanced: 'yellow',
    professional: 'purple',
  };
  return (
    <Container id="view-wrapper talk-view">
      <h1 className="documentFirstHeading">
        <span className="type_of_talk">{content.type_of_talk.token}: </span>
        {content.title}
      </h1>
      {content.description && (
        <p className="documentDescription">{content.description}</p>
      )}
      {content.audience?.map((item) => {
        let color = color_mapping[item.token] || 'green';
        return (
          <Label key={item.token} color={color}>
            {item.token}
          </Label>
        );
      })}
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: content.details.data }} />
      <Segment clearing>
        {content.speaker && <Header dividing>{content.speaker}</Header>}
        {content.website ? (
          <p>
            <a href={content.website}>{content.company || content.website}</a>
          </p>
        ) : (
          <p>{content.company}</p>
        )}
        {content.email && (
          <p>
            Email: <a href={`mailto:${content.email}`}>{content.email}</a>
          </p>
        )}
        {content.twitter && (
          <p>
            X:{' '}
            <a href={`https://x.com/${content.twitter}`}>
              {content.twitter.startsWith('@')
                ? content.twitter
                : '@' + content.twitter}
            </a>
          </p>
        )}
        {content.github && (
          <p>
            Github:{' '}
            <a href={`https://github.com/${content.github}`}>
              {content.github}
            </a>
          </p>
        )}
        <Image
          src={flattenToAppURL(content.image?.scales?.preview?.download)}
          size="small"
          floated="right"
          alt={content.speaker}
          avatar
        />
        {content.speaker_biography && (
          <div
            dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
              __html: content.speaker_biography.data,
            }}
          />
        )}
      </Segment>
    </Container>
  );
};
export default TalkView;

15.3. Summary#

We create a view for a content type to display the data of an instance.
We handle the case of missing values.

Volto view component: A default view for a "Talk"

Contents

15. Volto view component: A default view for a "Talk"#

15.1. Creating and registering a new view component#

15.2. Enhancing the view#

15.3. Summary#