> Symfony 5 > Netgen Layouts: Building Pages with Symfony
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04.

Shared Layouts

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Open up base.html.twig and move the {% block layout %} to be around everything. So, put the start just inside the body tag... and the end just before the closing body tag:

65 lines | templates/base.html.twig
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
// ... lines 3 - 16
<body>
{% block layout %}
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-light bg-light">
// ... lines 20 - 45
</nav>
{% block body %}{% endblock %}
<div class="container mt-5">
// ... lines 51 - 60
</div>
{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>

If we refresh the homepage now... it's destroyed! The top nav and footer are gone. Why did I do this? Because I love chaos! Kidding - I did it because it gives us the power, inside layouts, to design totally custom pages: even pages without the traditional navigation and footer, maybe like a temporary landing page for a promotion.

But let's be honest, 99% of the time, we will want the nav and footer. No problem, head back over to base.html.twig. Remember: adding blocks give us more flexibility. So, above the navigation, add a new block called navigation, with {% endblock %} after. Then, down here, another called footer... and {% endblock %}:

69 lines | templates/base.html.twig
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
// ... lines 3 - 16
<body>
{% block layout %}
{% block navigation %}
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-light bg-light">
// ... lines 21 - 46
</nav>
{% endblock %}
{% block body %}{% endblock %}
{% block footer %}
<div class="container mt-5">
// ... lines 54 - 63
</div>
{% endblock %}
{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>

I bet you know what I'll do next. In the layout admin, we can now add a Twig block to the top that renders navigation... then one down here on the bottom. It doesn't need to be in this last zone... but it makes sense there. Render footer.

Let's try it! Hit "Publish and continue editing" and... refresh. We are back!

Creating a Second Layout

Let's create a second layout, this time for the /recipes page. If you look at RecipeController, you'll see that I already did all the work to query for the recipes, and pass them into this template:

36 lines | src/Controller/RecipeController.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
class RecipeController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/recipes/{page<\d+>}', name: 'app_recipes')]
public function recipes(RecipeRepository $recipeRepository, int $page = 1): Response
{
$queryBuilder = $recipeRepository->createQueryBuilderOrderedByNewest();
$adapter = new QueryAdapter($queryBuilder);
/** @var Recipe[]|Pagerfanta $pagerfanta */
$pagerfanta = Pagerfanta::createForCurrentPageWithMaxPerPage($adapter, $page, 4);
return $this->render('recipes/list.html.twig', [
'pager' => $pagerfanta,
]);
}
// ... lines 27 - 34
}

And in that template, we loop over and render each one, with pagination:

33 lines | templates/recipes/list.html.twig
// ... lines 1 - 4
{% block body %}
<div class="hero-wrapper">
<h1>Doggone Good Recipes</h1>
<p>Recipes your pup will love!</p>
</div>
// ... lines 10 - 31
{% endblock %}

And so, I definitely want to include all of this custom work in the new layout.

Back in the admin area, I'll hit "Publish layout" as an easy way to get back to the layout list. Then hit new layout, I'll choose my favorite layout 2 and call it "Recipes List Layout". To start, add a new block called "Full View"... and drag it anywhere onto the page, whoops! There we go.

What is this "Full View". It's nothing special, in fact, it's kind of redundant! It's nothing more than a "Twig block" that renders the block called body. So, yes, we could have just as easily done this by using the normal Twig block and typing in body.

Publish this layout... then go to "Layout Mappings". Add a new one... and this time I'll link it first... to "Recipes List Layout". Then click "Details". Like last time, we could map this via the route name. But to see something different, use "Path Info", which, again, is just a fancy word for the URL, but without any query parameters. Make it match /recipes... "Save Changes" and... sweet!

When we try the page... it looks awesome! Except, whoops, I forgot the nav and footer! Adding those two blocks to "Recipe List Layout" is easy. But what if, later we decide that every page should render both the navigation block on top as well as a dynamic banner, maybe for a sale that we're having. If that happened, we would need to edit every layout to manually add that new banner.

Shared Layouts

Fortunately, there's a better way to handle repeated layout elements like this.

Hit "Discard" to get back to the layouts list, then click "Shared layouts" and "New shared layout". As usual, the layout type doesn't matter much, so I'll use my normal one... and call it "Nav & Footer Layout".

This is not going to be a real layout that's linked to any pages. Nope, it's just going to be a layout that we steal pieces from. Up in the top zone, create a Twig Block that renders navigation... and I'll even label it "Top Nav" to make it more clear. Then in any other zone - you can put it at the bottom, but you don't have to, add another twig block that renders footer and is labeled Footer.

Cool! Hit "Publish layout". Now we have one shared layout. Again, these are not meant to be mapped to pages: they're meant for us to use in other real layouts.

Check it out: edit "Recipe List Layout". On the bottom left of the screen, hiding behind the web debug toolbar - I'll close that temporarily - there's a button to link a zone with a shared layout zone. Click that, then select the top zone... called the "Header" zone, though that name isn't important.

Now, we can find a shared zone from a shared layout... and we only have one. Hit "Select Zone" and... that's it! The top zone in our layout will now equal whatever block or blocks are in the top zone of that shared layout. If we added more stuff to that zone in the shared layout, it would automatically show up here.

Do that one more time: select the last zone so that the footer definitely shows up at the bottom, select the shared zone and... done!

Publish that, move over, refresh and... the full page is back! Let's quickly repeat that for the "Homepage Layout". Oh, but this is tricky because I put all of my blocks inside this top zone. Mostly, these zones don't matter, but in this case, to avoid overwriting all of this, I'll drag everything except for the navigation twig block down here. We can fix the order later.

And now, set the top zone to use the one from the shared layout. Yup! It replaced what we had there before. Below, also link the bottom zone with the shared layout.

Perfect! Let's check the order of our blocks... which is kind of the beauty of layouts. If I don't like the order of what's on my page, I can always change it! That's better. Publish the layout, head back to the homepage on the frontend and... beautiful!

Next: let's make our recipe list page more flexible by allowing this top h1 area to be built and customized from inside layouts... instead of it being hardcoded in the template.