Shortcode blocks are very powerful as they allow you to provide advanced configuration options. Rock does a lot of the heavy lifting for you to help parse the configuration.

Block Content

The content (everything between the start and end tags) that the user adds to your shortcode is accessible to your template using the {{ blockContent }} variable. For instance, the parallax shortcode would use this variable to place the content inside the parallax section of a page.

Lava will be run across the markup of the {{ blockContent }}. You can disable this behavior by adding a parameter to your shortcode with the key of disablelavamerge and a value of 'true'.

Block Configuration

The block configuration can also be placed in the block contents using the syntax:[[ itemname parameter:'value' parmeter2:'value' ]] content [[ enditemname]]When Rock is parsing your shortcode, these options will be parsed and removed from the {{ blockContent }}. They will then be provided to your template as variables. How these variables are created is super powerful and will help reduce the amount of Lava that is created. Let's dig deeper to see how this works by looking at some examples.

As you've probably seen, the syntax of the googlemap shortcode is:

{[ googlemap height:'400px' scrollwheel:'false' draggable:'false' ]}
    [[ marker location:'33.640705,-112.280198' title:'Spark Global Headquarters']]
        <strong>Spark Global Headquarters</strong><p>
        It's not as grand as it sounds.<br>
        <img src='https://rockrms.blob.core.windows.net/misc/spark-logo.png' width="179" height="47" />
    [[ endmarker ]]
    [[ marker location:'33.52764, -112.262571']][[ endmarker ]]
{[ endgooglemap ]}

After parsing, your template would have access to the 'height, scrollwheel, draggable' variables just like any shortcode. It would also be provided an array of 'markers' using the variable name 'markers'. (Yes, we know... clever...) Each 'marker' in the 'markers' array would have a variable for 'location, title, ...' It would also have a variable called 'content' which would contain the text within the start and end configuration tags (in this case, the HTML for the Google Maps Info Window).

Single vs Repeating Configuration Items

You know which configuration items can have multiple values (such as the markers on the maps) and which should only have one (such as the map style item), but Rock does not. To deal with this, Rock will provide an array of items AND a single value for each type of configuration item it finds. For example, in the case of markers there will be a 'markers' array variable and a 'marker' variable. The 'marker' variable will have the first item in the array. Your Lava template can use either based on whether it should be a single configuration or multi-value item.