Magento 2 email template logic directives

Oct 13, 2016 Email Magento

There are two logical directives that can be used in Magento 2 email templates. The depend and the if directives. I will explain both in this post.

Magento 2 email template depend directives

We start the opening tag with two opening curly brackets {{ followed by the string depend, whitespace , a variable and two closing curly brackets }}. The closing tag looks like this {{/depend}}. Everything between the opening and the closing tag will be printed or executed to the template if the variable of the opening part exists and is not similar to an empty string in the template. Here a small example from Magento_Sales::email/creditmemo_new_guest.html.

{{depend store_hours}}
    {{trans 'Our hours are <span class="no-link">%store_hours</span>.' store_hours=$store_hours |raw}}
{{/depend}}

The part between {{depend store_hours}} and {{/depend}} is only printed or executed if the variable store_hours exists.

Magento 2 email template if directives

The if is similar to the depend directives, but it has a else tag if needed. We start the opening tag with two opening curly brackets {{ followed by the string if, whitespace, a variable and two closing curly brackets }}. The middle tag is just {{else}} and not required. The closing tag looks like this {{/if}}. Everything between the opening tag and the else tag will be printed or executed if the variable from above exists and is not similar to an empty string. In all other cases the part between the else tag and the closing tag will be printed or executed. Here a small example with and else tag from Magento_Email::email/header.html.

<a class="logo" href="{{store url=""}}">
    <img
        {{if logo_width}}
            width="{{var logo_width}}"
        {{else}}
            width="180"
        {{/if}}

        {{if logo_height}}
            height="{{var logo_height}}"
        {{else}}
            height="52"
        {{/if}}

        src="{{var logo_url}}"
        alt="{{var logo_alt}}"
        border="0"
    />
</a>

The if directives works also without else tag. In that case it is exactly the same as the depends directives. Here a small example for a if without a else from Magento_Sales::email/order_new_guest.html.

{{if shipping_msg}}
<p>{{var shipping_msg}}</p>
{{/if}}

Nested logic directives?

You may have one of the following questions now.

• Is it possible to use nested if or depend operators?
• Isn't depend the same as if without else?

It's possible to use a if in a depend and the other way around, but It is impossible to use a if in a if or a depend in a depend. The reason is pretty easy, Magento uses just simple regex to parse the templates and the closing tag of a child if is for the regex the closing tag of the parent tag. I guess that's the reason why Magento has also the depend directive.

Control the behavior of child templates

With the if or depend operators and the feature to injecting variables into child email templates we can control the behavior for child templates. Let us assume that we want a special paragraph in the footer template, but only if we send the newsletter subscription for example. Our footer template could look like this for example.

<!--
/**
 * Copyright © 2016 Magento. All rights reserved.
 * See COPYING.txt for license details.
 */
-->
<!--@subject {{trans "Footer"}} @-->
<!--@vars {
"var store.getFrontendName()":"Store Name"
} @-->

                    <!-- End Content -->
                    </td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <td class="footer">
                        <p class="closing">{{trans "Thank you, %store_name" store_name=$store.getFrontendName()}}!</p>
                    </td>
                    {{depend is_newsletter}}
                        <p>Here is a special paragraph only for the newsletter subscription</p>
                    {{/depend}}
                </tr>
            </table>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
<!-- End wrapper table -->
</body>

We can control the output of the newsletter special paragraph from the parent template with the variable is_newsletter. If we want to show the newsletter paragraph we can use the following code in the parent email template for example.

{{template config_path="design/email/footer_template" is_newsletter="true"}}

In every other parent template we can just ignore the variable is_newsletter and the newsletter special paragraph will not be printed in the footer.

{{template config_path="design/email/footer_template"}}