# Essences

# Overview

Essences store the actual content of your site. They are stored as instances of Alchemy::Content on each Alchemy::Element instance.

Alchemy comes with a lot of predefined essences for the regular needs of a website project. Combine them like a chemestry kit into elements.

Essences are Rails models. It is pretty easy to add your own essence class as well.

# Definition

Essences are defined as contents on an element definition.

# Global content settings

When defining contents, you need to provide a name and essence type. You can set hints and default values as well.

# config/alchemy/elements.yml
- name: article
  contents:
    - name: headline
      type: EssenceText
      hint: This is the headline
    - name: color
      type: EssenceText
      settings:
        input_type: color
    - name: copy
      type: EssenceRichtext
      default: Lorem ipsum dolor
      as_element_title: true

name String required

A lowercased unique (per element) name of the content. Separated words needs to be underscored.
type String required

An essence type this content is from. Alchemy has lots of built in essences for simple text, rich text, images, booleans and more.
hint String|Symbol|Boolean

A hint for the user in the admin frontend that describes what the essence is used for. The hint is translatable if you provide an I18n translation Symbol instead of a String. You may also set it to true to default to the I18n key alchemy.content_hints.your-content-name.
default String

The default text to prefill newly created elements. You may also use a symbol to set it to the I18n key alchemy.default_content_texts.your-symbol-name
as_element_title Boolean

For the displayed element title, the first content essence is used. Use this setting to override this behaviour and show other content as element title.
settings Hash

A set of options to configure the essence. Each essence has its own set of options listed below.

# Individual essence settings

Each essence type can have its own type of settings.

To configure these settings you have to pass them into its settings key in the elements.yml.

- name: my_element
  contents:
    - name: headline
      type: EssenceText
      settings:
        linkable: true

# EssenceText

Stores plain text of 255 chars max.

Use this for a headline, or a product name. The editor is renderd as a single lined input field. The view output will be sanitized and HTML escaped.

# Settings

linkable Boolean

If set to true, the user can add a link to the text.
input_type String

Change the input type (opens new window) of the form field displayed to the content editors.

# Example

- name: button
  type: EssenceText
  settings:
    linkable: true

# EssenceRichtext

Used to store paragraphs of formatted text.

The editor is rendered as a textarea with embedded Tinymce Editor.

# Settings

You can customize the Tinymce editor of a single element instance.

tinymce Hash

# Example

- name: text
  type: EssenceRichtext
  settings:
    tinymce:
      style_formats:
        - title: 'Subheadline'
          block: 'h3'

INFO

See the Tinymce customization guide for all available options

# EssencePicture

Store references to pictures the editor assigns from the library.

The editor partial is rendered as a picture editor with a lot of options (i.e. image cropper).

The view partial renders the assigned picture, resizes it and crops it if needed.

INFO

See the rendering images guide for further information on the powerful image rendering engine of Alchemy.

# Settings

size String

The size the image should be downsized to. I.e. 400x300
crop Boolean (default: false)

Crop the image to given size. This also enables the build in cropper tool.
srcset Array<String>

A list of sizes of this image uses as sources list. Best used with the sizes setting for implementing responsive images.
sizes Array<String>

A list of screen sizes the image sources should be used for. Best used with the srcset setting for implementing responsive images.

# EssenceDate

Use this to store a DateTime value. Renders a datepicker in the editor partial.

The view output is passed through Rails' I18n Library, so it is fully localizable.

# Settings

date_format String|Symbol Either a String with the format of Rubys strftime (opens new window) or a Symbol of a date/time format (opens new window) defined in your locale files.

# EssenceHtml

Useful to store HTML code (i.e. a embed, or tracking code).

WARNING

The view renders the raw, not sanitized or escaped output. So be careful!

# EssenceBoolean

Stores a Boolean value in the database. Renders a checkbox in the editor partial.

# EssenceSelect

Renders a select box in the editor partial and stores the value as String.

Useful for letting your user select from a limited set of choices.

# Settings

select_values Array

A list of values your users can select from. Use a two dimensional array (opens new window) for having value and text pairs.

# Example

- name: width
  type: EssenceSelect
  settings:
    select_values: ['200', '300', '400']

# EssenceLink

Stores a url in the database. Useful for linking things, where the editor should not set the linked text itself.

TIP

If you want that the linked text is editable by the editor use the EssenceText with linkable: true option instead.

# EssencePage available since Alchemy 4.4

References an Alchemy::Page.

Renders a select box in the editor partial.

Useful for contact form follow up pages or other use cases where you want to reference another page.

# Example

- name: contact_form
  contents:
    - name: follow_up_page
      type: EssencePage

← Elements Render Images →