I’m using Blocks in the Panel. Everything works as it should. But often I would like to be able to edit the content in the Content text .txt files in my code editor (rather than in the Panel).
This is easy to do with most fields, apart from the Blocks content, which is very hard to read as it seems to be all on one very long line.
Is there a way to make the Blocks content more readable / beautify it?
You can use the pretty option, see docs about blocks field.
I’ve tried this, but the text in the Content .txt files is still just one long line of text, making editing it in a code editor very difficult. Is this Blueprint code the correct place to use ‘pretty’? Or do I need to use it on the block Blueprint?
main_content:
label: Main content
type: blocks
pretty: true
width: 2/3
fieldsets:
- block_text_center
If you don’t re-save, nothing will change just by putting that option there.
Having said that, you still need to be careful with manually editing json strings, as you might mess it up when not careful.
I’ve made a change to the content in the Panel and resaved, but the text in the .txt file is still one long line. Where paragraph breaks are, instead of displaying the text on a new line, there are \n\n characters. So all my headings and dozens of paragraphs etc are all on one line.
Is this as it should be?
I’ve also tried adding pretty: true to the block Blueprint, but still the content is all on one mega long line in the .txt files
name: Text column centred
preview: fields
wysiwyg: true
pretty: true
fields:
text:
type: textarea
size: small
You won’t get line breaks for p tags etc. All you can do to improve it is to set your editor to softwrap long lines. Or you need to use separate blocks per paragraph, heading etc. Instead of squeazing everything into a single block.
The JSON format in which the blocks are stored are not really intended for manual editing, but for editing in the Panel.
If you don’t want to use the Panel, you’d better use Markdown.