SilverStripe ModelAdmin single record

Question

I've recently learned to create custom CMS sections in the back-end using class ModelAdmin and linking them using private static $managed_models = array('Contact'); to a DataObject named Contact.

My goal is to create a new section named "Contact" which holds a few contact details (phone, email etc). These are singular fields, not multiple records.

Unfortunately this setup (linking to dataobject) creates a sort of GridField in the back-end that creates multiple "Contact" records with the fields Phone, Email etc.

How can I create a custom CMS section that holds a singular entity of given Fields?

Answer 1

Instead of adding a single Client DataObject we can store these variables in the site settings using a SiteConfig extension.

To do this we create a SiteConfig extension with the variables and fields we would like:

mysite/code/extensions/CustomSiteConfig.php

class CustomSiteConfig extends DataExtension {

    private static $db = array(
        'Phone' => 'Varchar(255)',
        'Email' => 'Varchar(255)',
        'Address' => 'Varchar(255)'
    );

    public function updateCMSFields(FieldList $fields) {
        $fields->addFieldToTab('Root.Contact', TextField::create('Phone'));
        $fields->addFieldToTab('Root.Contact', TextField::create('Email'));
        $fields->addFieldToTab('Root.Contact', TextField::create('Address'));
    }
}

We activate the extension:

mysite/_config/config.yml

SiteConfig:
  extensions:
    - CustomSiteConfig

We can now use the the variables in any of our templates:

<% if $SiteConfig.Phone %>$SiteConfig.Phone<% end_if %>
<% if $SiteConfig.Email %>$SiteConfig.Email<% end_if %>
<% if $SiteConfig.Address %>$SiteConfig.Address<% end_if %>