override.ini or smart file placement ?

Thursday 11 October 2007 2:06:40 am

Hi

there seems to be two ways to 'override' a template in a certain design:

- add a line to override.ini, where you specify the location of an alternate
template based on class or nodeid
- put the alternate template in a place where Exponential expects it, like
../design/yourdesign/templates/node/view/line/article.tpl

- is that correct ?

- the preferred mechanism seems to be override.ini. why ?

- what is the order in which ezp checks for overrides ?
I assume override.ini overrides everything, so it is checked first ?

- which is more efficient: adding 1000 lines to override.ini (which
makes it long to parse/execute at each request) or add 1000 templates
on the right place (which needs a few system calls before ezp
finds out where the overriding template is located ) ?

currently, we use a huge override.ini, and performance is bad; i want to know if we could improve performance by decreasing the size of that file .. or i want to know how much performance will suffer if i do that anyway :-)

thanks!
*-pike

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The class eZContentObjectTreeNode does.

Thursday 11 October 2007 2:56:47 am

Hi,

To my mind, these 2 ways answer 2 different questions.

- Placing the tpl directly in the design is a generalization : you replace the original tpl by this one without considering the class of the object, of the attribute, the section, etc.

- Using the .ini file is a specialization : you override the template using conditions (class name, attribute name, section, ... it depends the tpl you want to override :
http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/3_9/reference/template_override_conditions

hth...

Thursday 11 October 2007 5:08:09 am

Hi *-pike,

I think you won't really improve performances of your site by decreasing the size of the override.ini and its cache.
Instead, you should have a look at articles [1] and forum topics [2] about performances problems. There's simple things to do like installing an opcode cache (like eAccelerator or APC) and more difficult like templates optimizations.

[1] http://ez.no/developer/articles/ez_publish_performance_optimization_part_3_of_3_practical_cache_and_template_solutions
[2] http://ez.no/developer/forum/general/ez_publish_performance_optimisation_faq

Damien
Planet eZ Publish.fr : http://www.planet-ezpublish.fr
Certification : http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/372448
Publications about eZ Publish : http://pwet.fr/tags/keywords/weblog/ez_publish

Tuesday 12 February 2008 12:10:25 pm

just for future readers:

I did have something wrong here. Exponential doesnt 'just expect' to find a line view for a article in

/design/mydesign/templates/node/view/line/article.tpl

If you explicitly request a

{node_view_gui view="line"}

, Exponential will look for a template somewhere called node/view/line.tpl. amongst others, it will look in

/design/mydesign/templates/node/view/line.tpl

if there happens to be an entry in override.ini for node/view/line.tpl, for class 'article', it will ofcourse follow whatever that entry says. beware, the base design already gives such overrides.

To limit your override.ini, you can ofcourse put a template at

/design/mydesign/templates/node/view/line.tpl

and add a switch in there that does something special for class "article". but such a switch is similar to what appears in override.ini after it is compiled (however, it won't be parsed at each request - so i think its more efficient).

If you (like me) are then tempted to write line templates that look like

{switch $class}
  {case $cx}{include uri="$ux"}{/case}
  {case $cy}{include uri="$uy"}{/case}
{/switch}

bear in mind, that includes are again less efficient..

*-pike

---------------
The class eZContentObjectTreeNode does.