HOWTOs / Making a Singleton ContentType

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In a nutshell; a singleton is a ContentType that contains only 1 record.

You can use singletons for all kinds of things, from complex homepages, single page applications to a general settings page for your website.

When you set a ContentType to be a singleton, you can use it to update some aspects of the layout for that ContentType's record, making your experience more fluent.

Creating the ContentType¶

To make a ContentType behave as a singleton, you need only add singleton: true to its configuration in contenttypes.yml.

Example: A "settings" singleton¶

In this example we'll run you through creating a settings ContentType, here you can allow your site manager to edit things like social media URLs, non-page specific content, and anything you feel a user should be able to manage independent of the template designer.

settings:
    name: Site Settings
    singular_name: Site Settings
    fields:
        headers:
            type: repeater
            group: headers
            fields:
                header_title:
                    type: text
                    label: Title text
        footer_text:
            type: html
            group: footer
        footer_copyright:
            type: text
    viewless: true
    singleton: true
    default_status: published
    sort: -id
    icon_many: "fa:cogs"
    icon_one: "fa:cog"

Note: Adding sort: -id will make sure you can grab the last record created when fetching it in a template, even if you've deleted and created the post multiple times and the ID has been incremented.

Using a singleton record in your template¶

As a singleton is just a ContentType much like any other, you can fetch the record with like normal using setcontent.

For example, to fetch the record and display some of its content, the Twig template would contain something similar to:

    {% setcontent settings = "settings" limit 1 returnsingle %}

    {# Display the headers #}
    {% for header in settings.headers %}
        <h2>{{ header.header_title }}</h2>
    {% endfor %}

    <div>
        {# The body of the template #}
    </div>

    {# Display the footer #}
    {% if settings.footer_copyright %}
        <p class="copyright">
        {{ settings.footer_copyright }}
        </p>
    {% endif %}