Freestyle Includes: Data - Quickstart Guide

Below are some screenshots giving a quick example of the setup of a "Data Template".

First you must create a new "Data Template". This contains the HTML template that you wish to output, and CSS associated with the template, and the structure of the data that you are displaying.

In the "Includes: Data" component menu on your Joomla backend, goto the "Data Templates" section.

Create a "New" template, and provide a descriptive title for it. Once you have entered a title, "Save" your template. This will open up the rest of the options available.

First you must create a new "Data Template". This contains the HTML template that you wish to output, and CSS associated with the template, and the structure of the data that you are displaying.

In the "Includes: Data" component menu on your Joomla backend, goto the "Data Templates" section.

Create a "New" template, and provide a descriptive title for it. Once you have entered a title, "Save" your template. This will open up the rest of the options available.

To store the data you want to display, you must first define what you would like to store. This is done by adding "Fields" to your "Data Template".

To add "Fields" to your "Data Template", edit the data template, and goto the "Fields" tab. Click the "New" button to begin adding a field to your data template. On the popup form you can specify the name and type of the field you wish to store data in, and any associated paramters.

Once you have added a field, an alias for the field will be generated. You can use this alias within your template to output that field. If you created a field called 'Name', its alias would be 'name'. To display that in the template, you woul add {name}.

Each data template can have multiple "Sets" of data. This allows the template to be output differently depending on what data you wish to display. A data set is a collection of data that will all be displayed together.

When editing the data template, goto the "Data Sets" tab.

Create a "New" dataset. A popup will appear asking for details on your data set. Enter the title of the dataset. The "Alias" will be the identifier used to select the data for inclusion on your pages. The format to display a dataset is {fsi data your-alias}. You can enter a "Shortcut" to this format in the Shortcut field. This will allow data to be included as {your-shortcut}.

Once you have created your dataset, "Save & Close" this page.

The data set you have added will now be displayed within the "Data Sets" tab. Click the "Edit Data" link to be taken to the "Data Entries" tab where you can start entering some data.

Use the "New" button in the data entries tab to add a new item to your data.

To output your templated data, in a Joomla! article you need to enter one of the lines out of the "Shortcut" field when listing the datasets.

An example would be {data example-movies}. This will cause the dataset with alias "example-movies" to be displayed.