Page Templates - Static

A Template is used to create a Page and defines which components can be used within the selected scope. A template is a hierarchy of nodes that has the same structure as the page to be created, but without any actual content.

Each Template will present you with a selection of components available for use.

• Templates are built up of Components;
• Components use, and allow access to, Widgets and these are used to render the Content.

A template is a node of type cq:Template and has the following properties and child nodes:

A template is the basis of a page.

To create a page, the template must be copied (node-tree /apps/<myapp>/template/<mytemplate>) to the corresponding position in the site-tree: this is what happens if a page is created using the Websites tab.

This copy action also gives the page its initial content (usually Top-Level Content only) and the property sling:resourceType, the path to the page component that is used to render the page (everything in the child node jcr:content).

There are two aspects to be considered:

• the structure of the template itself

• the structure of the content produced when a template is used

A Template is created under a node of type cq:Template.

Various properties can be set, in particular:

• jcr:title - title for the template; appears in the dialog when creating a page.

• jcr:description - description for the template; appears in the dialog when creating a page.

This node contains a jcr:content (cq:PageContent) node which be used as the basis for the content node of resulting pages; this references, using sling:resourceType, the component to be used for rendering the actual content of a new page.

This component is used to define the structure and design of the content when a new page is created.

Templates are used to create pages of type cq:Page (as mentioned earlier, a page is a special type of component). Each AEM Page has a structured node jcr:content. This:

• is of type cq:PageContent

• is a structured node-type holding a defined content-definition

• has a property sling:resourceType to reference the component holding the sling scripts used for rendering the content

AEM comes with a number of default templates available out of the box. In some cases, you may want to use the templates as is. In that case, you need to ensure that the template is available for your web site.

For example, AEM comes with several templates including a contentpage and home page.

To see a list of all templates in the repository, proceed as follows:

1. In CRXDE Lite, open the Tools menu and click Query.
2. In the Query tab
   
3. As Type, select XPath.
4. In the Query input field, enter following string:
   //element(*, cq:Template)
5. Click Execute. The list is displayed in the result box.

In most cases, you will take an existing template and develop a new one for your own use. See Developing Page Templates for more information.

To enable an existing template for your website and you want it to be displayed in the Create Page dialog when creating a page right under Websites from the Websites console, set the allowedPaths property of the template node to: /content(/.*)?

AEM page templates are simply models used to create new pages. They can contain as little, or as much, initial content as needed, their role being to create the correct initial node structures, with the required properties (primarily sling:resourceType) set to allow editing and rendering.

Needless to say a new template can be created completely from scratch, but often an existing template will be copied and updated to save you time and effort. For example, the templates within Geometrixx can be used to get you started.

To create a new template based on an existing template:

This example illustrates how to allow a template to be used for certain content paths. The templates that are available to the page author when creating new pages are determined by the logic defined in Template Availability.