VITEC-website/packages/vitec

VITEC

Headless TYPO3 extension powering the VITEC website

The editorial backend of a decoupled platform: TYPO3 v14 authors the content, this extension turns every content element into clean JSON for a React front end.

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What is this? evomedien/vitec is the custom TYPO3 extension behind the VITEC relaunch. The site runs headless: TYPO3 does not render HTML — it emits a JSON document per page that a separate React front end consumes. This extension provides the domain models, content elements, layout containers and the renderers that produce that JSON, plus schema.org structured data for SEO.

Table of contents

• Highlights
• Architecture at a glance
• Content elements & plugins
• Content Blocks
• Layout containers
• Forms
• Page‑level fields
• Structured data (JSON‑LD)
• Editorial tooling
• Requirements
• Installation
• Adding a new headless plugin
• Project structure
• Documentation
• License

Highlights

• 🧩 One JSON envelope for everything — every content element, plugin, container and Content Block is exposed with the same predictable outer shape.
• ⚡ Pure JSON output — domain payloads are built in PHP, fully decoupled from TypoScript and templates, so the logic is testable and versionable.
• 🏗️ Nestable by design — plugins render both as top‑level page content and as children inside layout containers.
• 🎛️ Editor‑friendly Content Blocks — hero, cards, CTA, FAQ, video, intro and a two‑column layout block, all with a unified header section.
• 📮 Forms without a form framework — one PHP definition drives both the JSON the React app renders and the server‑side validation of the submission.
• 🔎 SEO built in — a schema.org @graph (Organization, Product, FAQ, Events, News …) is emitted per page.
• 🛡️ Fail‑soft — a failing element yields empty output, never a broken page.

Architecture at a glance

HTTP request (headless: 1)
      │
      ▼
[L1] Page renderer            friendsoftypo3/headless        → { meta, content[], jsonLd }
      │
      ▼
[L2] Content-element envelope lib.contentElement(WithHeader) → id, type, appearance, content{header…}
      │
      ▼
[L3] Payload injection        Classes/UserFunc/*JsonRenderer → content.<key> (products, news, …)
      │
      ▼
[L4] Layout containers        vitec_cols_* = JSON            → items[].contentElements[]
      │
      ▼
[L5] Normalisation & nesting  ContentElementResolver / ContainerChildrenProcessor
      │
      ▼
[L6] Structured data          PageJsonLdRenderer + StructuredDataService → @graph
      │
      ▼
[L7] Page-level fields        MenuProcessor + FaviconsJsonRenderer → menus, favicons

Each renderer follows one pattern — an #[AsAllowedCallable] render() for top‑level use plus a renderForRecord(array $row) for reuse inside containers — and delegates serialisation to a service (see UsecaseSerializer as the reference).

📖 The full, normative architecture & interface specification lives in Documentation/Headless-JSON-Architecture.md.

Content elements & plugins

Domain	CType	Renderer	JSON key
Products	vitec_productlist / vitec_productshow	ProductList/ProductShowJsonRenderer	products / product
Success Stories	vitec_usecaselist / vitec_usecaseshow	UsecaseList/ShowJsonRenderer → UsecaseSerializer	usecases / usecase
Markets	vitec_marketlist / vitec_marketshow	MarketList/MarketShowJsonRenderer	markets / market
Solutions	vitec_solutionshow	SolutionShowJsonRenderer	solution
Downloads	vitec_downloadcard / vitec_downloadcardcollection	Downloadcard*JsonRenderer	downloadcard / downloadcardcollection
Datasheets	vitec_datasheets	DatasheetsJsonRenderer	datasheets
Events	vitec_eventlist	EventlistJsonRenderer	eventlist
Locations	vitec_locationlist	LocationsJsonRenderer	locations
Customer logos	vitec_customerlogos	CustomerlogosJsonRenderer	customerlogos
Cards	vitec_modelcard	ModelcardJsonRenderer	card
Forms	vitec_contactform / vitec_demoform / vitec_helpdeskform	FormsJsonRenderer	form
News	news_pi1 (+ 8 variants)	NewsJsonRenderer	news

Cards (vitec_modelcard) are one plugin for four model types — the FlexForm picks product, story, market or solution plus a record, and every card field comes from that record. Image resolution is delegated to UsecaseSerializer::image().

⚠️ vitec_simplecard is registered as a plugin and offered in the wizard, but has no JSON renderer — it emits no payload in headless mode. See Annex B‑8 of the spec.

Content Blocks

Declarative content elements (friendsoftypo3/content-blocks), serialised to JSON by nb-headless-content-blocks. All share the unified header section.

Block	Purpose
hero-section	Full‑width hero with background image/video, overlays and CTA
card	Flexible card (image/icon, CTAs, many layout variants)
cta-banner	Call‑to‑action banner
intro-paragraph	Rich intro text with optional media
video	YouTube or uploaded video with poster
faq	Accordion; also feeds the FAQPage structured data
columns	Two‑column layout (50/50 · 66/33 · 33/66) with per‑item content

Layout containers

Nested column grids (b13/container) that own child content elements and emit them as items, with per‑column flex (align/justify) and a whole‑grid gap.

CType	Layout
vitec_cols_50_50	Two equal columns
vitec_cols_66_33 / vitec_cols_33_66	Asymmetric two columns
vitec_cols_33_33_33	Three columns
vitec_cols_25_25_25_25	Four columns
vitec_container	Single column with a custom CSS class
vitec_cards_carousel	Carousel of card elements

Forms

Three form plugins (contact · demo · helpdesk) share one renderer and one definition. FormDefinitions is the single source of truth: the same field list produces the JSON the React app renders and validates the submission server‑side.

GET  page JSON  → content.form = { formKey, title, endpoint, honeypot, fields[] }
POST /api/vitec/form/<formKey>  → { "success": true } | 422 { success:false, errors{} }

FormSubmissionMiddleware handles the endpoint: honeypot → validation → store in tx_vitec_form_submission → deliver. Delivery is a strategy (DeliveryInterface) with EmailDelivery (active) and SalesforceDelivery (prepared stub — deliver() always throws), chosen per form via the FlexForm. Because the submission is stored before delivery is attempted, a failed delivery never loses data — it is recorded as delivery_status = failed on the record and the endpoint still answers success: true.

Page‑level fields

Beyond content[], every page response carries:

Field	Source
mainNavigation / footerMenu / metaMenu	headless MenuProcessor; the curated menus are driven by the site settings menu.footer.pageUids / menu.meta.pageUids
favicons	FaviconsJsonRenderer — ready‑to‑render <link> descriptors plus themeColor
jsonLd	PageJsonLdRenderer (see below)

Two frontend middlewares run before page resolution: vitec/form-submission (the form endpoint) and vitec/success-story-path-rewrite, which lets the public SEO URL /success-stories/<slug> resolve to the detail subpage without changing the browser URL.

Structured data (JSON‑LD)

PageJsonLdRenderer + StructuredDataService assemble a schema.org @graph per page: Organization, WebSite (root only), BreadcrumbList, Product, VideoObject, FAQPage, ExhibitionEvent and NewsArticle.

Editorial tooling

Backend module "VITEC Import" (Web menu): CSV import per domain model (Market, Solution, Product) with a persistable column mapper and a unified review list (new / update / unchanged / db-only) — what gets written is the editable per-row payload, applied through DataHandler. A fourth tab SEO Research stores each delivery of the recurring keyword-research CSV, diffs it against the previous one and checks the CSV structure against the page tree and the domain records.

CLI command	Purpose
vitec:import-success-stories	One-time migration of the old-site success stories
vitec:import-downloads	Import old-site downloads (Collateral only, idempotent, filename normalization)
vitec:create-markets	Create market records the SEO structure check reports missing, incl. sys_category assignment
vitec:market-dummy-image	Assign the shared placeholder image to markets without an image

All commands support --dry-run and are safe to re-run.

Requirements

Component	Version
TYPO3 CMS	^14.3
PHP	8.x
friendsoftypo3/headless	^5.0
friendsoftypo3/content-blocks	^2.4
netzbewegung/nb-headless-content-blocks	^0.0.23
b13/container	^3.1
georgringer/news	^14.0

Installation

composer require evomedien/vitec

# apply database schema and clear caches
vendor/bin/typo3 database:updateschema "*.add,*.change"
vendor/bin/typo3 cache:flush

Enable headless mode in the site configuration (config/sites/<site>/config.yaml):

headless: 1
dependencies:
  - friendsoftypo3/headless
  - friendsoftypo3/headless-mixed
  - nb-headless-content-blocks/headless-content-blocks
  - georgringer/news

Adding a new headless plugin

The short version (full normative rules in the architecture spec, Clause 9 & Annex A):

1. Model / TCA / SQL — create the domain table; declare table & field names as constants.
2. Serializer — Classes/Service/<Domain>Serializer with serializeListItem() / serializeDetail().
3. Renderer — Classes/UserFunc/<Domain><Kind>JsonRenderer with #[AsAllowedCallable] render() + renderForRecord(), delegating to the serializer.
4. Registration — configurePlugin() in ext_localconf.php, a FlexForm, an icon and a wizard entry in Configuration/page.tsconfig.
5. TypoScript — in Configuration/Sets/Vitecset/setup.typoscript:

   tt_content.<ctype> < lib.contentElementWithHeader
   tt_content.<ctype>.fields.content.fields.<key> = USER
   tt_content.<ctype>.fields.content.fields.<key>.userFunc = Evomedien\Vitec\UserFunc\<Class>->render
   

   Skipping this step is exactly what leaves a plugin payload‑less (see vitec_simplecard).
6. Nesting — if it may sit inside a container, register it in PLUGIN_RENDERERS (in both ContentElementResolver and ContainerChildrenProcessor).
7. Deploy — database:updateschema "*.add,*.change" & cache:flush.

Conventions: list keys are plural, detail keys singular; page‑id via the frontend.page.information request attribute; container CTypes derive with < (copy), never =<.

Project structure

packages/vitec/ — click to expand

packages/vitec/
├── Classes/
│   ├── UserFunc/            # JSON renderers (one per plugin) — headless entry points
│   ├── Service/             # Serializers, ContentElementResolver, StructuredDataService
│   ├── DataProcessing/      # ContainerChildrenProcessor (container → items)
│   ├── Forms/               # FormDefinitions + Delivery/ (email, salesforce)
│   ├── Middleware/          # form endpoint, success-story path rewrite
│   ├── Domain/Model|Repository/
│   ├── Controller/          # Extbase controllers (non-headless / backend)
│   └── Backend/ · View/ · Hook/ · EventListener/ · Tca/ · Preview/
├── ContentBlocks/
│   └── ContentElements/     # card, cta-banner, columns, faq, hero-section, intro-paragraph, video
├── Configuration/
│   ├── Sets/Vitecset/       # setup.typoscript — the single headless entry point
│   ├── TypoScript/Headless/ # containers, menus, news JSON definitions
│   ├── TCA/ · FlexForms/ · Services.yaml
├── Documentation/
│   ├── Headless-JSON-Architecture.md   # normative spec (start here)
│   └── HeadlessIntegration.md          # informal how-to
├── Resources/
└── ext_tables.sql · ext_localconf.php · composer.json

Documentation

Document	Purpose
Documentation/Headless-JSON-Architecture.md	Authoritative architecture & JSON interface specification (ISO‑style)
Documentation/HeadlessIntegration.md	Informal step‑by‑step how‑to

License

GPL‑2.0‑or‑later — © evomedien.

_{Built for the VITEC relaunch · TYPO3 headless + React}