Using Themes and Templates

Themes

Introduction

A theme is what defines certain parts of the look and feel of your shop. All installations of VirtueMart should start out with the default theme.You can change the Theme in the "Site" section of the configuration form. Usually there's only one theme available, so you can't switch.A good way to think of themes is as "plugins", which contain a collection of page templates, images, stylesheets, javascript and other files. While editing these files can be a bit technical, the layout is separated from the content allowing you to make and distribute your own themes.

Structure

Themes can be found in the directory /components/com_virtuemart/themes
of your VirtueMart installation. The internal structure of a theme is the following:

Theme Configuration

Introduction

Use configuration values in templates

It's easy to get or set the value of a configuration parameter from inside a template. You just need to call $this?get_cfg( 'parameterName' ) to get the value for this parameter. Example from /templates/product_details/flypage.tpl.php

// Show the vendor link?
if( $this->get_cfg('showVendorLink', 1)) {
    echo $vendor_link;
} 

Templates

Introduction

Important: a template in VirtueMart has nothing in common with a "template" in Joomla!.
A template is a file holding HTML and PHP code for displaying a page or a part of it.
Example: the file /templates/product_details/flypage.tpl.php. It is used to display details of a product. !!Placeholders or Variables? You might want to know which placeholders or variables are available to style and display certain details...well that differs from template to template.
The reason for this is that all variables must be imported into the template before you can use them. Most important: there are no more placeholders like {product_name} as used in VirtueMart 1.0.x. All details are avalaible in PHP variables. So all you need to know is: which variables can be used in what template and how can I use them?!Use PHP in the template

If you want to output the value of a variable all you need to do is add PHP brackets and echo the variable inside: Print out the value of a variable

<p>Product Name:
<?php echo $product_name ?>
</p>

Predefined Global Variables

$VM_LANG

This is the global language object. It displays strings which are defined in the language file for VirtueMart. Usage: <?php echo $VM_LANG->_PHPSHOP_FLYPAGE_LBL ?> This would print "Product Details".

$sess

Used to print SEF-enabled URLs that can be used in links. Usage: <a href="<?php echo $sess->url( $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] .'?page=shop.product_details&product_id='.$product_id ) ?>">Details...</a>

Predefined Variables for the Flypage / Product Details Template

Predefined Variables for the Browse Page / Product Listing Templates

Using and "Fetching" Templates

Create a template object

To being using templates, you need to get a copy of the global template object:

$tpl = vmTemplate::getInstance();

Import variables into the template

If you want to use a certain variable in your template you must import it before!
Templates don't have the global scope. So all variables are not available in a template unless you "import" them.
This can be done using the set method from the controller file (e.g. "shop.browse.php"):

$tpl->set( 'product_name', $product_name );
## Syntax: $tpl->set( 'This_is_the_variableName_available_in_the_template', $theOtherVariable );

$tpl->set( 'product_weight', $db_browse->f('product_weight') );

Parse the template

If you have finished importing all needed variables into the template object, you can "fetch" it using this syntax: Parse a template

$contents = $tpl->fetch( 'product_details/myFlypage.tpl.php' );
// Print out the contents
echo $contents;

// Alternative: Fetch a cached template (caches if no cached copy available and Caching is turned on)
$contents = $tpl->fetch_cache( 'product_details/myFlypage.tpl.php' );
// Print out those contents
echo $contents;