Combine two almost identical sidebar templates, used for blog index and category index pages

Question

I'm struggling to combine two almost identical sidebar templates.

I’m working on a site that has:

1. a blog channel section with an index template that ‘includes’ a ‘sidebar-main.html’ template
2. a structure section with a page template that ‘includes’ the same ‘sidebar-main.html’ template
3. a category template that lists blog posts for a single category, but which ‘includes’ a different ‘sidebar-category.html’ template

The ‘sidebar-main.html’ and ‘sidebar-category.html’ templates are almost identical. Their main function is to offer the user a choice of an 'All categories' menu sorted by category, or a 'Top categories' menu sorted by number of posts, selectable in the entry control panel.

The 'sidebar-main.html template starts:

<div class="sidebar column">

    <div  class="sticky-container" data-sticky-container>
        <div class="sticky" data-sticky data-anchor="stickyAnchor" data-sticky-on="large" style="width:100%">

    {% if entry.sidebarContent is defined %}

        {% for block in entry.sidebarContent %}

            {% if block.type == "sidebarWidget" %}
                {% if block.widget.contains('topCategories') %}

                <h4 class="section-title">Top categories</h4>
                <div class="card">
                    <div class="card-section">

                    {% set entryIds = craft.entries.section('blog').ids() %}
                    {% set allCats = craft.categories.relatedTo(entryIds).level(1).find() %}
                    {% set catArray = {} %} 

                    {% for category in allCats %}
                      {% set catArray = catArray | merge({(category.slug):craft.entries.relatedTo(category).total() }) %}
                    {% endfor %}

                    {% set catArray = catArray|sort|reverse %}

                    {% for catSlug, entryCount in catArray | slice(0,3) %}
                    {% set category = craft.categories.slug(catSlug).first() %}

                    {% if loop.first %}
                        <div class="row">
                            <div class="first-column small-6 large-12 columns">
                                <ul>
                    {% endif %} 

                                    <li class="clearfix">
                                        <a href="{{ category.url }}">{{ category.title }}&nbsp;</a>
                                        <div class="count">{{ entryCount }}{% if entryCount == 1 %}&nbsp;post{% else %}&nbsp;posts{% endif %}</div>
                                    </li>

And the 'sidebar-category.html' template is identical to this, except that entry.sidebarContent is replaced by category.sidebarContent. This works fine, with no errors or problems (except it's not DRY). However, if I can eliminate the use of 'category.sidebarContent', then I can split up the combined template to enable its use in 404 and search etc pages.

I hope all that makes some sort of sense, and thanks for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You could pass the content to the sidebar include, as follows:

{% include 'sidebar-template' with {
    content: entry.sidebarContent
} only %}

The sidebar template would then use content, rather than entry.sidebarContent.

It's also worth taking a look at Twig embeds, which can be very useful in situations such as this.