From URL to rendered page

01 Hostname to site, prefix to abstraction The path from a URL to your HTML and its first steps: the hostname picks the environment, site and client, and the start of the path picks the API, the admin or the public site, where the page cache is checked before any template runs. Where to look when a hostname reaches the wrong site.

02 Module route to controller On the public site, the start of the path picks a module and the module's own routes pick a controller; anything no module claims goes to Pages. Why a site builder almost never writes a route, the exceptions, and the one place a URL maps straight to a template.

03 The layout chooses the template The controller finds the record; the record's layout names the template. One controller renders every page of a site, each with its own layout's template, and a page with no layout falls back to the module's default template. Shown on this documentation site's own pages.

04 The variables in every template The platform variables every template receives, under the same names in Smarty ($_url) and Twig (_url): what each is for, which exist only on the public site, and which only when someone is signed in. Then the variables a controller adds, such as page and record.

05 Inspecting a render How to see what a template received and why a page came out wrong: debug_vars in both engines on a development environment, the error page and the admin's Template Errors list, and what the usual surprises, from Template not found to a blank space, mean.

Objects ReferenceGenerated from the platform, so it is always current

API ReferenceEvery REST endpoint, in cURL, PHP, Python and JavaScript

In this unit