Can anyone tell me if it's possible to do something like this:

<% control MyControl %>
$MyValue - $MyPageValue
<% end_control %>

where $MyPageValue is a value available _outside_ the control?

If it's not (I can't find a way) then how is one supposed to access values external to a control? You can't pass them in like this:

<% control MyControl($MyPageValue) %>
$MyValue - $MyPageValue
<% end_control %>

hi Jam,

Good question ; I had the same problem , you can find my post here :
http://www.silverstripe.com/silverstripe-development/flat/5649

Ended up working around it with big and nasty "IF" blocks around the controls.

Please let us know if you find an answer.

you're right, this is currently not possible. i've always worked around this problem by customizing the passed data with the parent scope.

php:

function Members() {
  $members = DataObject::get('Member');
  return $members->customise(array(
    'ParentScope' => $this
  ));
}

template

<% control Members %>
$FirstName
$ParentScope
<% end_control %>

its ugly, but it works :)

p.s.: you can gain a bit of insight how your template is actually parsed by adding ?showtemplate=1 to the URL.

its ugly, but it works :)

:S

I really wish I could use Smarty with SS. It's got (IMHO) much nicer syntax, and more flexibility when you need it.

p.s.: you can gain a bit of insight how your template is actually parsed by adding ?showtemplate=1 to the URL.

Thanks - that's useful.

Can someone please explain this a little clearer? It seems to be a pretty important issue. (I spent an hour trying to work out why a Page type var was not available within a control). That member example doesn't make sense to me at all. I mean, in what context is that function being called??

I think you can access the functions available on the current pages controller by using $Top -

--
When you’re inside a control loop in your template, and want to reference methods on the current controller you’re on, breaking out of the loop to get it, you can use $Top to do so. For example:

$URLSegment
<% control News %>
$URLSegment <!-- may not return anything, as you're requesting URLSegment on the News objects -->
$Top.URLSegment <!-- returns the same as $URLSegment above -->
<% end_control %>

Thanks for the tip Willr. I just tested this and it works perfectly.

Cheers
Aaron

The limitation of this is it gets the topmost, and I dont believe theres a way to get only a Parent element. For example consider -

<% control Member %>
$Firstname // returns John
<% control Projects %>
$Parent.Firstname // returns '' as no firstname defined on Projects 'Parent' in the dataobject sense, not a templating sense.
$Top.Firstname // returns '' as no firstname defined on controller,
$Firstname // returns '' as no firstname defined on a Project
<% end_control %>
<% end_control %>

For this sort of thing, Ingos method works well. The template parser is pretty simple in what it can achieve and its one area that on the core-devs list there was a bit of a discussion about a couple of months back on how we could improve it, and this would be one thing that I would be happy to have!.