Access a Content Item (this)

The Parsley this call is used to reference content which resolves from requesting a specific URL relative to a content item's meta url.

Overview

A Parsley Standard call uses dot notation to access a specific piece of content stored in the Zesty.io Instance database.

If we think of all the content entered into a Zesty.io instance as living on tables where each content set is a table, each field is a column, and each content entry is a row, then a standard Parsley call provides instructions for which table, which row, and which column to go to to grab a specific content item.

For example, consider we have a Content Collection called articles with a field called title. Every time we add an article to this Collection, we add a Row to the table were the title of the article is stored in the title column. To access the title of the most recently added article we can use the parsley call {{ articles.last().title }} which is effectively describing the table.row.column where the content we want can be found. The table is the articles table, the row is the last row, and the column is the title column.

One of the most common Parsley calls is {{ this.field_name }}. This call will use the content stored for the specified field for the current item which the url resolves for. For example, we'll say I have a homepage collection which has a welcome_title field, and I store the content "Welcome to my website!" in that field. I can use this Parsley:

<h1>{{ this.welcome_title }}</h1>

to generate this output:

<h1>Welcome to my website!</h1>

Auto-created This Fields

Every content item with a view that is created in Zesty.io has default fields for settings and SEO. All of these fields are available for developer use and include:

  • zuid - the unique identifier for the content item.

  • getUrl - the relative URL path to the content item's meta url.

  • path_part - the portion of the URL path specific to the content item.

  • seo_link_title - the title used in Parsley Auto-navigation calls.

  • seo_meta_title - the title used as the title in the head.

  • seo_meta_description - used for the meta description in the head.

  • seo_meta_keywords - not used by default

  • set_zuid - the unique identifier for the content model which the resolved content item belongs to.

  • parent_zuid - the unique identifier of the immediate parent content item, it only returns if the current content item is a child of another.

  • updated_at - returns the latest version's save date.

How it works

comment: <> (In the case of {{ this.field_name }} we are still using the table, row, and column instructions we described in the Parsley Content Calls overview article, but we get to use a short cut.) When {{ this.field_name }} is rendered on a website, Zesty.io is able to look up which Content Model and which Entry is being referenced based on the URL, then uses which ever field is requested to get the correct data. The 'this.' specifies both the table the current content model, the row as the content entry being viewed, while the field referenced after the this is the column.

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