Data tags are not working inside if condition

Hi,

In the below screenshot, you can see the marked area if condition. I want to show the product price according to the user group only if the user is logged in. But in the below code shows nothing. No errors at all.

Can anyone help me with a solution?

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Erik Merkley

Short answer: Try moving the [%set [@webPrice@]%] line inside the [%if [@user:username@]... section

Long answer: it's quite a story. All of the following is completely undocumented, because Neto don't give a crap about developer docs (as I'm sure you noticed). So we're left to painstakingly reason this out ourselves. It's time I documented it myself.

Neto's B@SE engine is very slow. To combat this, they use a series of different caches. The most important in this case is a server-side, page-level cache. After a page is rendered the result is stored in cache and returned for subsequent queries for about an hour.

Of course, some elements on the page are session-specific, and depend on user or cart data. This is handled automatically by Neto in a very clever way using "keyhole caching". As soon as you use session data in a block of B@SE (here a great example is [@user:username@]) then instead of actually executing it, a special HTML marker is written out. Check the page's source (actual raw source, not rendered content in devtools) - you'll see span tags with "nloader-content-id" attributes.

When the page loads, Neto's client-side JS looks for all these "nloader" markers on the page and sends their data to the server which executes the B@SE code and returns it using the current session data. That gets inserted back into the blocks on the page. You'll actually see it happen - there is a pause as the page loads and then user/cart/session elements suddenly appear.

This is called "keyhole caching" because it's punching out little blocks of the page (keyholes) that can't be cached, and rendering them later using AJAX. The bulk of the page can then be stored in the server cache and returned much quicker.

Now go back and consider your code. A new keyhole is only established when you use a session B@SE tag. Your first one is the [@user:group_id@] inside the [%product%] tag. This means your [%set%] will either contain nothing or a bunch of html (for the keyhole loading)! When you later try and use the [@webPrice@] tag it's inside another keyhole (created by the [%if%], and won't have been set to the right value anyway.

The simple solution is to have both your [%set%], and where you use it, inside one keyhole. You can achieve this just by moving it inside the [%if%].

If you ever need to manually create a keyhole such that a block of B@SE will always be AJAX-loaded and hence able to freely access session/user variables, use the [%ajax_loader%] tag:

https://developers.maropost.com/documentation/neto-designer-documentation/b-se-tag-library/function-tags/optimisation-and-seo/ajax_loader/

Just be sure to read its docs carefully about passing in variables. AJAX-loaded B@SE often loses much of the original context of the page so you can get mysterious situations where data tags are inexplicably blank - just as you have in this case!

@Pranay Shinde is anyone even responsible for dev docs anymore? It's been a pretty poor effort over the years and is basically abandoned now.

Amila Deshan (1407)

Thank you for your reply @Erik Merkley .

The moving Set tag is not working. Even when I check [@SKU@] inside the condition, its not working, that's so weird.

Erik Merkley

This is caused by that loss of context I mentioned. When the AJAX block of B@SE is rendered by the server, it's lost all the previous context of the page except those tags that caused Neto to generate it in the first place. In this case, that's just the [@user:username@] tag in the [%if%].

If you put a debug line inside that [%if%], you'd find it would write out just one tag - [@username@]. The sku is not present anymore.

Incidentally, here's how to do a debug tag:

[%debug show_data:'1' /%]

Because we need to explicitly tell Neto which tags to provide to the AJAX context, we need to use the [%ajax_loader%] tag to manually create a keyhole. Here's my full example:

[%ajax_loader sku:'1' username:'1' %]

[%set [@webPrice@]%][%product sku:'[@sku@]'; group_id:'1' %][%param *body%][@store_price@][%/param%][%/product%][%/set%]

[%if [@user:username@] ne 'noreg' %]

Price: [@webPrice@]

[%/if%]

[%/ajax_loader%]

You'd need to list all the tags required within that AJAX block in the [%ajax_loader%] or else they'll simply be blank. There are good examples in the ajax_loader docs.

You also need to be aware of the extra markup that ajax_loader creates. Check devtools to see the final rendered result. There's a couple of extra DIVs and INPUTs used to create the keyhole. It can affect your stylesheets for example.

Deactivated Member

Hi @Erik Merkley . Thank you for your detailed explanation for helping out Amila in this matter.

I understand the issues with developer docs not being updated for a while now so I have passed on your feedback on the developer documentation. The responsibility for maintaining and updating the developer documentation lies with our team. We acknowledge that there have been gaps and are actively working on an improvement plan.

Your input is invaluable in this process, and we encourage you to continue sharing your insights and experiences.