Occasionally you may wish to reference content from one module in another one, or apply one piece of content across multiple places in the Email Design System.
Referencing across a document means you can skip repetitive tasks such as setting the same background colour for all the modules in your emails. It gives you the option to set styling or formatting in one field and applying it to the whole email, as opposed to setting it individually in each module. This part of the email creation process can be made as easy as possible.
Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music
So far we've looked at referencing a field which is in the same editable element as the reference to it.
<modulezone name="my_modulezone">
<module name="my_module">
<field name="my_module_field"></field>
<editable name="heading">
<field name="header_text"></field>
<content replace="{{header_text}}">Hello</content>
</editable>
</module>
</modulezone>
To reference a field which is declared outside of an editable but inside the same module the field name needs to be prefixed with module:
module.my_module_field
If the variable is referenced inside the module tag, but outside of the editable tag, then just the my_module_field' part of the name is needed. Similarly fields which belong at the modulezone level are prefixed with modulezone and document level fields are prefixed with document.
module.my_module_field modulezone.my_modulezone_module_field document.my_document_field
For example, to change the background colour of the whole email you could use a field anywhere in the HTML outside of any modulezones or modules.
<field type="color" name="bg_color" label="background color"></field>
Then throughout the Email Deign System, whenever you want to use this field to change the background colour, use the document prefix as you'll be referencing a document level field. If you have a field inside of a modulezone but outside of any modules you can use the modulezone prefix in the same way.
<table replace-bgcolor="{{document.bg_color}}">
Every field and reference has a scope. The scope of an element is the level at the hierarchy at which it lives. The scope is always either:
When a reference has in the same scope as the field, only the field name needs to be used.
Almost any field can be referenced from anywhere in a Taxi Design System. The one expectation to this is that you can't reference a field that is inside a module that is in a modulezone from outside that module.
The singular forms of module' and modulezone' are short hands for this module' and this modulezone'. To use a different modulezone or module or editable the plural form is used and a name must be specified. The language has been designed so that the most usual use cases have the shortest names.
Some examples:
modules.first_module.my_module_field modulezones.header_modulezone.my_modulezone_field modules.second_example_module.editables.title.title_text editables.title.title_text
In the last example we've not specified which module the editable is in. Taxi will know we mean the same module as the reference.