Setting and displaying custom messages in your site

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31 October 2011 | Shea | Decorators, Controllers | Supports v2.4

5 6

There is a method on SilverStripe's Form class to set a success or error message when the form is submitted. That's cool... but sometimes you need to display a message that is not related to a form. I've created a couple of simple controller methods to enable setting and displaying of message banners anytime.

In Page.php

class Page_Controller extends ContentController {

	public function setMessage($type, $message)
	{	
		Session::set('Message', array(
			'MessageType' => $type,
			'Message' => $message
		));
	}

	public function getMessage()
	{
		if($message = Session::get('Message')){
			Session::clear('Message');
			$array = new ArrayData($message);
			return $array->renderWith('Message');
		}
	}
}

The setMessage() method on the controller takes two arguments; $type is used as the CSS id for the message template. It defines the color and styles for the message. I use one of 3 message types - Error, Success, Notice. You can use whatever message types you want, just add styles accordingly. The $message argument is the message you want to be displayed to the user.

When setMessage() is called, a Message array is stored in Session, ready to be retrieved by, you guessed it... getMessage(). The getMessage method grabs the message if it has been set, removes it from Session (we only want it to display once) and then returns the Message array rendered with the Message template. 

In themes/yourtheme/templates/Includes/Message.ss 

<% if Message %>
	<p class='message' id='{$MessageType}Message'>
		$Message
	</p>
<% end_if %>

First we check if a message has been set, if so, render the HTML to display the message, with a css id that will identify the message type for our CSS styles.

layout.css

p.message {
	padding:10px;
	margin: 10px 10px 0;
	border: 1px solid #FFF;
}

p#SuccessMessage {
	color:#3E933A;
	background:#E2F7D8;
	border-color:#9FDE9C;
}

p#NoticeMessage {
	color:#CCBD00;
	background:#FFF8D7;
	border-color:#F1E988;
}

p#ErrorMessage {
	color: #DA1D1D;
	background: #FFDFDF;
	border-color: #FFBBBB;
}

So that's the guts of it. We can now place $Message in our page template wherever we want the message displayed.

Example usage (in page controller or extension of)

if($foo ! = $bar){
	$this->setMessage('Error', 'Error: Yo fool, foo is not bar');
	$this->redirectBack();
}