Guide 03 · Developer docs

The theme repo and the asset pipeline

Everything a developer changes on a Core dna site lives in its theme repository. This guide covers the repository and its build, printing records in templates, stylesheets and client-side code, and the parts of a site around the main content.

L1–L2

Unit 02 of 05 7 pages

Records in templates

Updated 23/10/2026 01:50

The record a template renders, apart from its layout areas: what the controller assigns, relations and collections, links, custom fields, formatting, escaping and the header comment that documents a template's inputs. Every example in Smarty and Twig.

Start with What the controller hands the template: it names the variables each module assigns and explains the response model they hold, which accounts for nearly every access error you will meet. The next three pages walk outwards from the record: to related records and lists, to the URL of any record, and to the custom fields administrators add to menus, products and users.

The last three are about printing: dates, numbers and money in each engine; escaping, which neither engine does for you on Core dna; and the header comment that turns a template into a documented interface. Reading layout areas is not here but in Guide 4, from The area getters and what each costs.

In this unit

Read in order

01 What the controller hands the template A template does not fetch its record: the platform's controller assigns it, under the record type's own name and as record, wrapped in a response model. The variable names by module, what the wrapping changes, and what each engine does with a call the model does not allow or a relation that is empty. 02 Relations and collections A getter that returns several records returns a collection you can loop, filter, sort and slice in the template. What each collection method does, the loose matching and the sorting fault to know about, and why filtering in the template is convenient but expensive. 03 Linking between records Take a record's URL from the record with getFullPath(), never from its slug. What the path includes, why it keeps links right when an editor sets a custom URL or moves a page, the empty path, the absolute form, and the other URL getters. 04 Custom fields in templates Menus, products, users, categories and a dozen other record types carry custom fields an administrator defines. Which records have them, the getters by type, what comes back when nothing is stored, and why a misspelt field name is not an error in either engine. 05 Dates, numbers and money Records hand templates raw values: dates already in the site's time zone, prices as decimal strings, totals as money objects. Formatting each in Smarty and in Twig, the site's own date formats, the empty date that Twig turns into today, and money that prints in US English unless you pass a locale. 06 Escaping output On Core dna neither Smarty nor Twig escapes output by default: every value prints exactly as it is held. Escaping for each place a value can go, in both engines, the few cases where raw output is right, and the two questions to ask before every raw print. 07 Documenting a template's inputs A template that expects variables is an interface, and its markup does not say what the interface is. The header comment convention in both engines, what to record (each variable, its type, whether it is required, the layout areas a component reads), and the comment syntax that breaks a page.