Managing Blocks

First steps

Set application to development mode with

bin/magento deploy:mode:set developer

The preferred method to edit Nosto's block data is by Extending Nosto's Module. However you can also Create a Storefront Child Theme. Notice that by creating a new child theme, all widgets defined in the parent theme will not be inherit by the child theme, you would have to manually recreate all of them.

Managing Blocks

Enable Template Path Hints for Storefront

In order to identify which block, or which template is being used in Magento's front end blocks, we need to activate Template Path Hints

  • On the Magento 2 Admin Panel, click on Stores, then Configuration under the Settings tab

  • Scroll down and expand the Advanced group, now select Developer

  • Under the Debug group you will find Enabled Template Path Hints for Storefront, select Yes from the dropdown menu and hit the Save Config button.

Add Layout and Template Files - Overriding

After identifying which template we want to override, in this example we will use the element.phtml template, we will now look at it's layout file located in the Vendor\Nosto folder of your Magento 2 Installation.

Navigate to vendor/nosto/module-nostotagging/view/frontend/templates and you will find the element.phtml Now, if we want to override this template, we need to create some directories according to the name of the theme or module we are overriding.

Using a child theme

If you are using a child theme, you need to create a folder named Nosto_Tagging, which is the name of our module. In the path app/design/frontend/<vendor>/<theme_name>/Nosto_Tagging we also need to create 2 new directories.

  • Create a new folder named layout and another folder named templates

  • Inside the templates directory, we put the new templates structure we want Nosto to use, so create the element.phtml file there with the following content:

<div class="nosto_element" id="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($this->getElementId()); ?>">
    <?php echo __('This is a superb custom text'); ?>
</div>

  • Inside the layout folder we need to create a new file named default.xml, the basic structure for this file is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
   <body>
       <referenceContainer name="content">
           <block class="Nosto\Tagging\Block\Element" name="customelement" template="Nosto_Tagging::element.phtml"></block>
       </referenceContainer>
   </body>
</page>

Using the module extending solution

In case you have extended the Nosto module, you need to mirror the vendor folder structure. Create the following directory structure:

app
├── code
│   └── My
│       └── Nosto
│           └── view
│               └── frontend
│                   ├── layout
│                   └── templates

  • Inside the templates directory, we put the new templates structure we want Nosto to use, so create the element.phtml file there with the following content:

<div class="nosto_element" id="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($this->getElementId()); ?>">
    <?php echo __('This is a superb custom text'); ?>
</div>

  • Inside the layout folder we need to create a new file named default.xml, the basic structure for this file is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
   <body>
       <referenceContainer name="content">
           <block class="Nosto\Tagging\Block\Element" name="customelement" template="My_Nosto::element.phtml"></block>
       </referenceContainer>
   </body>
</page>

At the end, you should at least have the structure below:

app
├── code
│   └── My
│       └── Nosto
│           ├── composer.json
│           ├── etc
│           │   └── module.xml
│           ├── registration.php
│           └── view
│               └── frontend
│                   ├── layout
│                   │   └── default.xml
│                   └── templates
│                       └── element.phtml

Clear cache and visit Magento's FrontEnd, and you should see the text in Nosto's element.

Moving Blocks Position

In order to move a block inside a page, we need to set the tag move in our layout file.

  • If you are using the child theme method, navigate to app/design/frontend/<vendor>/<theme_name>/Nosto_Tagging/layout

  • If you are using the module extension method, navigate to app/code/My/Nosto/view/frontend/layout

Using the corresponding xml file, define which block you will move to where. In this case, let's use the default.xml to move the Recommendations For You block:

<body>
     <move element="nosto.page.home1" destination="header.container" as="new_alias"/>
</body

You can also use the attributes after="-" and before="-" to define exactly after or before which element you will put the new one. The dash - means all elements.

  • The tag above will move the nosto.page.home1 block to the very top of the page.

  • Set the destination container in the destination tag attribute

  • Set the new alias in the as attribute

  • Additionally, you can find the Nosto block names in the xml files under the %magento_installation_path%/vendor/nosto/module-nostotagging/view/frontend/layout directory

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