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This is the second part of the tutorial about how to use Magnolia content types.
In this part, you will define relationships between different content types, try out the multiple property and learn to handle complex use cases using submodels. You will see how you can store data in different languages and how to set up security for a production environment.
Extended use case
In order to promote their tour guides, the travel agency Magnolia Travels decides to provide information about which office each tour guide works out of and what vehicles are available for tourists. For example, the tour office in Ho Chi Minh City currently owns five Yamaha Nuovo 135 bikes.
In the first part of the tutorial, we created a content type for tour guides. In this part, we will define two additional content types in the same domain:
- Tour office
- Tour vehicle
A tour office has one or more tour guides. In addition, each tour office has one or more tour vehicles available.
In the next section, we will define content types and app descriptions for the tour vehicles and the tour offices. Later on, we will define the relationships between different content types and extend the content types.
Adding new content types with apps
Add the content type definitions and app descriptors for the tour vehicles and the tour offices to the light module content-type-examples.
The new content types require a name property; we will use the automatically created name property to define the name property.
Tour vehicles
A tour vehicle has a name, vehicle type, number of seats and description.
Content Type definition
datasource:
workspace: tourvehicles
namespaces:
mt: https://www.magnolia-travel.com/jcr/1.0/mt
autoCreate: true
model:
nodeType: mt:tourVehicle
properties:
- name: vehicleType
- name: numberOfSeats
type: Double
- name: description
App descriptor
Tour offices
A tour office has a name, country, city and address. It may link to tour vehicles and to tour guides.
Content Type definition
datasource:
workspace: touroffices
rootPath: /
namespaces:
mt: https://www.magnolia-travel.com/jcr/1.0/mt
autoCreate: true
model:
nodeType: mt:tourOffice
properties:
- name: city
- name: address
- name: country
# - name: tourGuides
# - name: allVehicles
App descriptor
Light module file structure
Your light module should now have the following structure:
content-type-examples/
├── apps/
│ ├── tourGuides-app.yaml
│ ├── tourOffices-app.yaml
│ └── tourVehicles-app.yaml
├── contentTypes/
│ ├── tourGuide.yaml
│ ├── tourOffice.yaml
│ └── tourVehicle.yaml
└── i18n
└── content-type-examples-backend_en.properties
Updating the i18n file
Since you have created new apps, you also need new user interface labels. Update your messages file /content-type-examples/i18n/content-type-examples-backend_en.properties to use the following version:
Enabling app launcher tiles
In order to test the new apps you just added, you need app launcher tiles to start them. Add one tile for each app as shown in part I of the tutorial.
Alternatively, add the property defaultGroup to the path /modules/ui-admincentral/config/appLauncherLayout and give it the value edit. (See App launcher layout).
To see the app launcher changes, log out and log in again.
Checking the new content types and apps
Test the new apps work by creating some tour offices and vehicles.
Linking content types and adding multiple values
You can define relations between different content types. An item of type A can have zero to many links to items of type B. This is called a 0-n relationship.
In this section we define a relation between tour offices and tour guides. An office may have one or many tour guides.
We will also use the multiple property to make it possible to add more than one tour guide to a given office.
Linking tour guides to offices
An office may have more than one tour guide. Edit the model property of the tourOffice content type:
model:
nodeType: mt:tourOffice
properties:
- name: city
- name: address
- name: country
- name: tourGuides
type: tourGuide
multiple: true
- Line 14: For the property
tourGuides, we define itstypeastourGuide. This value is the name of an existing content type. - Line 15: The
multipleproperty with the valuetruemakes it possible to add more than one tour guide.
Open the tourOffices-app app with the app launcher tile and add a tour guide to a tour office.
Creating and linking submodels
Submodels are useful whenever you need a group of fields more than once. A content type model definition can contain a list of submodel definitions within the subModels property. Submodels can be used only within the content type where they have been defined.
We defined the content type for tour vehicles at the beginning of this part of the tutorial. A tour vehicle has the properties: name, vehicle type, number of seats and description.
Now we will extend the tour office to make it possible to add tour vehicles to it. We need to be able to specify the number of different vehicles. For example, the tour office in Ho Chi Minh City currently owns five Yamaha Nuovo 135 bikes.
To map this case, we add a submodel to the tourOffice content type.
Defining a submodel
Keep in mind that a submodel definition is very similar to a model definition and that a model definition can contain a list of submodels.
Here is a fragment which shows a submodel:
subModels:
- name: vehicleGroup
properties:
- name: vehicle
type: tourVehicle
- name: amount
type: Double
- There is one submodel named
vehicleGroup. - The submodel has two properties:
vehicle– Its type istourVehicle,which is the name of the content typetourVehicle.amount– A number to indicate how many different vehicles are available.
Linking to the submodel from a model property
After you define the submodel, you must add a property in the model with type: <submodel-name>.
This is the updated model of the tourOffice content type definition with the submodel added:
model:
nodeType: mt:tourOffice
properties:
- name: city
- name: address
- name: country
- name: tourGuides
type: tourGuide
multiple: true
- name: allVehicles
type: vehicleGroup
multiple: true
subModels:
- name: vehicleGroup
properties:
- name: vehicle
type: tourVehicle
- name: amount
type: Double
- Lines 19-25: The submodel definition.
- Line 20: The submodel's
nameisvehicleGroup(arbitrary).
- Line 20: The submodel's
- Lines 16-18: The model property
allVehicles.- Line 17:
typehas the valuevehicleGroup, which is the name of a submodel. - Line 18:
multipleenables you to choose more than one of the submodelvehicleGroup.
- Line 17:
Now the tour offices app is ready to handle vehicles as described in the use case:
Complete tourOffice content type definition
Linking to items in existing content apps
We've looked at how to link from one content type to another. You can also link from a content type to an already existing app—such as the Assets app—which is not based on a content type definition.
To demonstrate this, we will extend the tour guide content type (and its app) with a new image property to assign an asset (an image) to a tour guide.
To do so:
Add a new property to the model definition of the content type. Give it an arbitrary name. Here we use
image:model: nodeType: mt:tourVehicle properties: - name: vehicleType - name: numberOfSeats type: Double - name: description - name: imageOverride the defaults of the field that were generated for the property:
!content-type:tourVehicle name: tourVehicles-app # subApps: detail: editor: form: tabs: default: fields: - name: description fieldType: richText # ... - name: image fieldType: link targetWorkspace: dam appName: assets label: Select image identifierToPathConverter: class: info.magnolia.dam.app.assets.field.translator.AssetCompositeIdKeyTranslator contentPreviewDefinition: contentPreviewClass: info.magnolia.dam.app.ui.field.DamFilePreviewComponent
Setting the fieldType and defining a Link field in the app descriptor is a feasible way to link to any content app.
Linking to assets
To link to an asset, instead of defining the link field in the app descriptor (as showed above) - use type: asset in the content type definition. In this case there is no more need to override the field in the app descriptor.
model:
nodeType: mt:tourVehicle
properties:
- name: image
type: asset
This is what the adapted tourVehicles-app looks like:
Localizing content
The properties of a content type item can be stored in multiple different languages.
If localization and internationalization (i18n) are completely new to you, we suggest you read the Language section of this documentation.
Here is an overview of how you enable multilanguage content:
- Enable multilanguage authoring.
- Set
i18n=truein the properties of the model definition. - Define locales in the site.
To try out this feature, change the tourVehicle content type so that we can store the different language content for the description property.
Enabling multilanguage authoring
/config/server/i18n/authoring. This allows editors to enter the same content in multiple languages.| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
| info.magnolia.cms.i18n.DefaultI18nContentSupport | |
| true |
Properties:
enabled | required , default is Enables multilanguage content entry. |
class | required A class that implements I18NAuthoringSupport such as:
|
By default, the Magnolia instance is already configured for the
authoring property.
Setting the i18n property in model properties
You must enable localization of content type items for each property.
Here is an example showing only the description property enabled for multilanguage support:
datasource:
# ...
model:
nodeType: mt:tourVehicle
properties:
- name: vehicleType
- name: numberOfSeats
type: Double
- name: description
i18n: true
- name: image
Defining locales in site
If you are using the magnolia-community-demo-webapp as indicated in part I of the tutorial, your Magnolia instance already has a site with properly defined locales.
If you have no site definition, configure a site where you define at least its i18n node as shown below.
Result
Setting up security
In this section, we look at how to set up security for content types and their apps in a production environment. We cover both JCR access security and app security.
In a local development environment, you can use the superuser user. Superuser has the permissions required to manage the content types and related apps that you built during this tutorial. In a production environment, you should create users with specific roles and deactivate the superuser account.
In this tutorial, we will create the ct-examples-editor role to edit the content type items on the author instance.
JCR access security
The content type items are stored in the JCR.
Creating the ct-examples-editor role on the author instance
Add a role with read and write permissions for the JCR workspaces: tourguides, touroffices and tourvehicles.
- Log in to the Magnolia author instance as a user (such as
superuser) with permission to write on theuserrolesworkspace. - Open the Security app > Roles subapp .
- Click Add new role.
- Provide values for the fields in the Role info tab:
- Role name:
ct-examples-editor - Full name: Example role that can edit tourguides, touroffices and tourvehicles workspaces.
- Role name:
- In the Access control lists tab, you see a list of all JCR workspaces visible to the current user.
Create an access control list (ACL) for the workspacestourguides,tourofficesandtourvehicles. with the following settings:- Read/Write
- Selected and subnodes
- / (in the last field)
- Save the new role.
The system automatically creates another ACL for the workspace
userroles. This ACL makes sure that the new role can read its own role definition on the workspace which stores the roles.
Here is a screenshot from the JCR ACLs for the ct-examples-editor role:
Assigning the ct-examples-editor role to eric the editor
In a production environment, you have different users editing content such as tour guides, tour offices, tour vehicles and others. These users do not have the superuser role.
The magnolia-community-demo-webapp we are using emulates a production environment. It already contains a user named eric that has several roles to edit different types of content.
To assign the new ct-examples-editor role to eric the editor:
- Log in to the Magnolia author instance as a user (such as
superuser) with permission to write on theuserrolesworkspace. - Open the Security app > Users subapp.
- Select
ericand click Edit user. - Click the Roles tab. There is a Twin-column field.
- Select the
ct-examples-editorrole in the left Other available roles column and move it using the>>button to the right Granted roles column. - Click Save changes.
Log out and in again as the user eric with the password eric.
E ric cannot see the app launcher tiles for the apps tourGuides-app, tourOffices-app and tourVehicles-app yet. You must enable the tour apps for Eric; you will learn how do this in the App security section.
Creating a role to read specific JCR data on the public instance
In a production environment, you would also create a role to grant read access for the new workspaces tourguides, touroffices and tourvehicles. Read only access would be assigned to the special system user anonymous. This would make sure that anonymous website visitors on the public instance would see content, once rendered, from those workspaces.
How to create this role and how to render the content types item on a website are not within the scope of this tutorial.
App security
Without any further configuration, by default, only the superuser role is granted access to an app.
The app descriptor, which defines an app, has a property named permissions. In this property, you can add a list of roles for which you want to grant app access.
Add the following code snippet to the very bottom of the YAML files for the apps tourGuides-app, tourOffices-app and tourVehicles-app:
permissions: roles: [ct-examples-editor]
Log out and in again as the user eric (you assigned the role ct-examples-editor to Eric earlier).
Eric the editor can now use all three apps: tourGuides-app, tourOffices-app and tourVehicles-app. He can add, edit and delete content items in the JCR workspaces: tourguides, touroffices and tourvehicles.
Congratulations.
You have built a complete set of content types including complex types with submodels. You have created the apps to manage the content items for these content types. You have defined relationships between content types and other, non content type-based apps. Finally, you have learned to properly adjust security settings.
Next steps
The next logical step would be to set up your Magnolia system to display the tour guides, the tour vehicles and the tour offices on your public instances for your website visitors. This could be done in different ways.
Some suggestions:
Headless consumption of the content types
- Define a REST endpoint (using the Delivery endpoint API) for each of the three content types.
- Develop a static website that renders the data via REST delivery endpoints using Angular, ReactJS or a similar JavaScript framework.
Develop a mobile phone app to present the data consumed from Magnolia via REST using PhoneGap, Ionic or similar frameworks.
Embed content type items as components into pages
- Develop some component and page templates to embed different content type items into pages (managed with the Pages app).





