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{block}

{block} is used to define a named area of template source for template inheritance. For details see section of Template Inheritance.

The {block} template source area of a child template will replace the corresponding areas in the parent template(s).

Optionally {block} areas of child and parent templates can be merged into each other. You can append or prepend the parent {block} content by using the append or prepend option flag with the child's {block} definition. With {$smarty.block.parent} the {block} content of the parent template can be inserted at any location of the child {block} content. {$smarty.block.child} inserts the {block} content of the child template at any location of the parent {block}.

{blocks}'s can be nested.

Attributes

Attribute Name Required Description
name yes The name of the template source block
assign no The name of variable to assign the output of the block to.

Note

The assign attribute only works on the block that actually gets executed, so you may need to add it to each child block as well.

Option Flags (in child templates only):

Name Description
append The {block} content will be appended to the content of the parent template {block}
prepend The {block} content will be prepended to the content of the parent template {block}
hide Ignore the block content if no child block of same name is existing.
nocache Disables caching of the {block} content

Examples

parent.tpl

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{block name="title"}Default Title{/block}</title>
        <title>{block "title"}Default Title{/block}</title>  {* short-hand  *}
      </head>
    </html>

child.tpl

    {extends file="parent.tpl"} 
    {block name="title"}
    Page Title
    {/block}

The result would look like

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>Page Title</title>
      </head>
    </html>

parent.tpl

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{block name="title"}Title - {/block}</title>
      </head>
    </html>

child.tpl

    {extends file="parent.tpl"} 
    {block name="title" append}
        Page Title
    {/block}

The result would look like

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>Title - Page Title</title>
      </head>
    </html>

parent.tpl

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{block name="title"} is my title{/block}</title>
      </head>
    </html>

child.tpl

    {extends file="parent.tpl"} 
    {block name="title" prepend}
    Page Title
    {/block}

The result would look like

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>Page title is my titel</title>
      </head>
    </html>

parent.tpl

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{block name="title"}The {$smarty.block.child} was inserted here{/block}</title>
      </head>
    </html>

child.tpl

    {extends file="parent.tpl"} 
    {block name="title"}
        Child Title
    {/block}

The result would look like

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>The Child Title was inserted here</title>
      </head>
    </html>

parent.tpl

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>{block name="title"}Parent Title{/block}</title>
      </head>
    </html>

child.tpl

    {extends file="parent.tpl"} 
    {block name="title"}
        You will see now - {$smarty.block.parent} - here
    {/block}

The result would look like

    <html>
      <head>
        <title>You will see now - Parent Title - here</title>
      </head>
    </html>

See also Template Inheritance, $smarty.block.parent, $smarty.block.child, and {extends}