The BLOCK directive in Template Toolkit
The BLOCK directive in Template Toolkit is a cool way of repeating short text, rather than creating a new template file.
You know how we like to separate our menu entries on our website with a |.
<a href=”/features”>FEATURES</a> |
<a href=”/screenshots”>SCREENSHOTS</a> |
<a href=”/contact_us”>CONTACT US</a>
I might need to change that separator into something which looks better. Probably add some more whitespace, change the color, or even use some cool image.
Use the BLOCK directive.
[% BLOCK menu_separator %]
<b>|</b>
[% END %]
What I’ve done is shoveled away my menu separator in the menu_separator BLOCK, which I can then call (execute) by using the PROCESS directive.
<a href=”/features”>FEATURES</a>
[% PROCESS menu_separator %]
<a href=”/screenshots”>SCREENSHOTS</a>
[% PROCESS menu_separator %]
<a href=”/contact_us”>CONTACT US</a>
Cool. Right?
Now to use CSS to jazz it up, because we can, you just need to edit the menu_separator BLOCK.
[% BLOCK menu_separator %]
<span id=”menu_sep”>|</span>
[% END %]