Beyond reusing PHP classes, Elefant allows a developer to specify handlers in their apps as being "helpers" which can be reused in other apps.
To see a list of available helpers, visit the helpers reference, or run the following command:
$ ./elefant list-helpers
This will output a raw list of handler names. To see what a given handler does and how to use it, you can use the following command:
$ ./elefant helper-docs <helper>
This will output the documentation found in the first block-level comment in the handler script.
For example, if you run:
$ ./elefant helper-docs blog/tags
This will output:
# Helper: blog/tags
Renders a tag cloud, with more frequently used tags appearing larger.
This helper uses no parameters, so calling it is as simple as:
<?php
echo $this->run ('blog/tags');
And including it in your template is as simple as this:
{! blog/tags !}
The blog/rssviewer helper lists one parameter:
# Helper: blog/rssviewer
Renders the specified RSS feed `url` as a list of links.
Caches the feed for 30 minutes between updates.
Parameters:
- `url`: The URL of the RSS feed to be displayed.
So we know that to use this helper, we need to include the URL like this:
<?php
echo $this->run (
'blog/rssviewer',
array (
'url' => 'http://www.example.com/blog/rss'
)
);
And the same thing called from a template:
{! blog/rssviewer?url=http://www.example.com/blog/rss !}
For a full list of helpers and what they do, visit the helpers reference.
Next: Client-side helpers