# Widgets
Widgets allow you to create micro frontends for your sites and applications. Using Widgets extends the capabilities of your sites and allows you to have more control since you can add more functionality by keeping each widget as a separate entity from your site.
When you enter the Widgets section of the site, you can see a list of all the widgets that have been created. In the top bar you can filter the list of widgets by status, author, tags, or do a text search by the name of the widget.
In the widget editing view, you can see three areas: the top action bar, the main work area and the properties column on the right.

Along the top bar, on the left, you can see the widget name and current status:
- Draft: This status means a widget is new or is unpublished.
- Published: This status means a widget is published and the version in the editor contains no unpublished changes.
- Pending changes: This status means there is a published version of a widget, and the editor contains unpublished, pending changes.
- In review: This status means team review is enabled and this widget is in review.
- Approved: This status means team review is enabled and a widget passed the review process. You can now publish this widget.
On the right, these are the different actions: Preview : This allows you to open the preview of the widget's editable version in a new tab.
Warning
You can preview widgets as a user without a session or with a Modyo session. For this, it's recommended to log in or out of Modyo from your site before entering preview mode, because if you log out in preview mode you might encounter security errors like x-frame-options or mixed-content, depending on your site's SSL and custom domain settings.
Differences : By clicking on this icon, you will go to the difference view, where you can compare the changes between multiple versions of the widget.
By default, you see the differences between the published version and the editable version you are currently working on, but you can use the selectors to compare older backed up versions as well.
Activity : This displays a sidebar with the widget's activity history and comments. At the bottom of the sidebar, you can submit comments. Next to each activity, click on "see detail" to show the complete information of an activity log.
Other options : Archive and create a copy of the current widget.
Main button:
- Save: Saves current changes.
- Send to review: Changes the widget status to "In review". You can continue making changes, but each change sends a notification to all assigned reviewers via email.
- Publish: Takes you to the joint publication view where you can publish your widgets.
Other main actions
- Unpublish: If the widget is published, you can take it out of production using this option.
- Force Publish: Admin team members have the option to forcibly publish widgets, circumventing the established reviewal process.
Tip
Only unpublished widgets can be archived.
Tip
Archived widgets do not appear in the main widget list or in the Custom widget selection in Page Builder. You can restore an archived widget by editing it and using the restore option in the upper right corner of the editing view.
Once a widget is published, it is available as a custom widget in the page builder.
Tip
To learn more about publication lifecycles in Modyo, review the Versioning section.
In the main work area you can see the following:
- Code Tabs: A JavaScript, CSS, and HTML tab is available to build widgets.
- Asset manager: Opens a modal that lists all account files and provides filters and searching. Clicking the image preview or file name opens an editor where you can resize/crop the image, and change attributes such as the title or alternate text. Selecting the copy icon provides you with a URL you can paste, and you can select the "Upload files" tab to upload files. You can learn more about By clicking on it, you will raise the file management modal, where you can filter and search the files you have uploaded in the File manager and copy its URL to use them in your widget. You can also upload new files from this modal.
- Shortcuts helper: A small pop-up that displays useful keyboard shortcuts for the Widget Builder.
- Snippets: Displays a list of snippets available from the Template Builder and copies their code to reference them in the widget.
- Changes: If changes have been saved and not published, it will display this list of all the times saved each file (JS, CSS, and HTML). Clicking on a sub-version changes the contents of the tab to the content of the subversion that was clicked.
Tip
To avoid losing any changes you currently have, be sure to save before jumping between save states. This way, you can always return to the most recently saved version in the Changes list.
Tip
If you publish a new version of your widget, the Changes list resets and erases all save states. This is because the new editable version now matches the version you just published. Saving new changes adds new save states until the next time you publish.
You can make use of Liquid in the Javascript, CSS, and HTML tabs in the widget builder. For more information check the associated Liquid documentation.
The Properties on the right contains the following fields:
- Name: Use this field to update the name of your widget.
- Tags: Use this field to add tags to your widget. Tagging a widget makes it easier to search and filter. As your digital channels scale in size and complexity, good tagging helps keep your channel management well organized.
- Pages using this widget: You will see a list of pages that are using this widget. While viewing pages in this listing, you will not be able to download or archive the widget.
Warning
If you delete a widget from a page and publish, you will still see that page in this listing since the widget is still referenced in the backups of that page. From version 9.1.10 onwards, you can unpublish any published widget, even if it is in use. Active references on pages will become inactive, so you will not see the widget on the site if you unpublished it. Also, you will be able to archive any unpublished widget, so if there are still references on some pages of the widget you want to archive, they will be removed when you archive the widget.
# Create a Widget
To create a new Widget and have a micro frontend for your sites and posts, follow these steps:
- From the Modyo Platform main menu, expand Channels, and click your site.
- Click Widgets.
- Click the + New Widget button.
- Enter the name of your widget and click Create.
- Customize your widget using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or Liquid.
- Once finished, click Publish.
# Widget variables
In the variables tab you can see the list of variables created in the widget, and their respective actions for:
- Copy the liquid code to use that variable.
- Edit the variable
- Delete the variable.
Next to the name of each variable you will see an "overwritten" indicator if the variable also exists at the account or site level in the global variables.
When modifying a variable, you can choose the name and default value that the variable will take in the widget. In addition, you can decide if you want to make a list of values available so that when you instantiate the widget on a page, you can choose from these different values.
When you use the list of possible values, you must leave each value on a new line, and leave a *
in front of the value you want to be taken as the default.
When you instantiate the widget on a page, you will see that now all variables being used (whether account, site, or widget) will be listed as "disabled" with their default value. If you want to overwrite the value of a particular variable for that instance of the widget on that page, you must select the checkbox to the left of the variable and change the value it takes.
Warning
Adding the widget on a page will list all the variables that that widget is using, so if you don't see any of the variables that are defined in the widget, chances are that the variable in the widget code is not being used.
# Synchronous and asynchronous loading
Warning
This is an experimental feature and it may be subject to changes.
You can decide whether you want to load your widgets synchronously, that is, have your widget's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code loaded along with the rest of the page from the server, or load asynchronously, so all static content on the page will load and once the main document is loaded, the content of your widget will be loaded using JavaScript. By default, all widgets are loaded asynchronously.
To change the way each widget loads, go to the edit view of the page containing the widget, select the widget and check or uncheck the "Sync loading" option.
Warning
Keep in mind that using very heavy widgets synchronously can be the cause of bad performance in your pages, you should carefully decide which widgets will load synchronously and which ones will load asynchronously.
# Use Internationalization (i18n)
With i18n you can configure and add new languages to your widgets.
To handle internationalization in the Widgets in our widget catalog we use the Vue i18n (opens new window) package installed using the vue-cli-plugin-i18n (opens new window) plugin, you can review its documentation here (opens new window). When you install the plugin, a folder for languages called locales
and a configuration file called i18n.js
are created.
├── src/
│ ├── App.vue
│ ├── i18n.js
│ ├── main.js
│ ├── locales/
│ │ ├── en-US.json
│ │ └── es-CL.json
Tip
To learn more about internationalization and vue-i18n, see Internationalization with vue-i18n (opens new window) by VueSchool (opens new window)
# Configuration
In the configuration file we will get the language of the site that we have on the platform. First, the LANG constant is initialized in the i18n.js
file.
import Vue from 'vue';
import VueI18n from 'vue-i18n';
const LANG = window.liquid ? window.liquid.lang : 'es-CL';
Vue.use(VueI18n);
//... more code
export default new VueI18n({
locale: LANG,
fallbackLocale: 'es-CL',
messages: loadLocaleMessages(),
});
We have to create the variable liquid.lang
in Modyo Platform. To create this variable, follow these steps:
- In your browser, log in to Modyo Platform.
- Expand Channels, and click Sites.
- Click Templates.
- Open the
theme
View in the Views -> Javascript -> theme section. - Paste the following code:
window.liquid = {
lang: '{{@site.language}}' === 'en' ? 'en-US' : 'es-CL'
};
This code assigns the language to the liquid.lang
variable, depending on the value of @site.language
using Liquid.
# Add a language
To add a new language to the site, we simply create a JSON file in the locales
folder where its name is the code of the language to be added. For example, if we want to add Brazilian Portuguese, add pt-BR.JSON
:
├── src/
│ ├── locales/
│ │ ├── en-US.json
│ │ ├── pt-BR.json <-- nuevo idioma
│ │ └── es-CL.json
Warning
The structure of the language file must be a json object:
# Form validation
In order to locate the error messages that the validator shows, we need to make a small modification to the i18n.js configuration file.
- We import error messages into the languages we need.
- In the LoadLocaleMessages function, we add the validator messages in the corresponding language.
- Return the modified messages object.
// 1
import esCL from 'vee-validate/dist/locale/es-CL.json';
import enUS from 'vee-validate/dist/locale/en-US.json';
import ptBR from 'vee-validate/dist/locale/pt-BR.json';
function loadLocaleMessages() {
const locales = require.context('./locales', true, /[A-Za-z0-9-_,\s]+\.json$/i);
const messages = {};
locales.keys().forEach((key) => {...});
// 2
messages['es-CL'] = {
...messages['es-CL'],
validations: esCL.messages,
};
// 2
messages['en-US'] = {
...messages['en-US'],
validations: enUS.messages,
};
// 3
messages['pt-BR'] = {
...messages['pt-BR'],
validations: ptBR.messages,
};
// 4
return messages;
}
# Using Liquid in Widgets
Create a javascript object in Snippets so you can make use of Liquid in your Widgets.
Widgets, since they are decoupled from the platform, have the disadvantage of not being able to use Liquid directly and we don't have access to liquid drops, in order to work with them we'll have to make them available via javascript from the platform. Liquid Markup is an important part of the platform, of how we build views, and access the content on it. It also gives us access to drops, context variables that allow us to interact with our views more dynamically. For example, you can determine what content to show the user according to the segment to which they belong, hide a menu depending on the page being visited, and so on.
Follow these steps to create a snippet with Liquid variables:
- In the platform's side menu, expand Channels, and click Sites.
- Click on your site.
- In your site menu, click Templates and select Snippets.
- Add a new Custom Snippet. For this example use
liquid2js_js
, but it can be any other name.

- Open the javascript section and paste the code:
window.liquid = {
lang: '{{@site.language}}' === 'en' ? 'en-US' : 'es-CL',
request: {
path: "{{request.path}}",
},
};
In this snippet we created an object called liquid with scope window
that contains the language and the request path of the site. From our Widget we can now access this data using the object created in the previous step. For example, if you want to get the site's languages from the Widget, you can do so with:
const languages = window.liquid.lang;
Warning
In development mode we won't have access to this object since we're working locally, so the recommendation is to assign default values when defining these variables locally.
In the following example, const lang takes the value of window.liquid.lang, if the object doesn't exist, it assigns the default value “es-CL”:
const lang = window.liquid !== "undefined" ? window.liquid.lang : "es-CL";
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