alternative global variable to siteUrl or the primary website?

Question

I am currently developing a multilingual craft website. To include assets like styles and scripts, I have so far built the URL following the pattern "{{ siteUrl }}/assets/css/main.css".

However, as soon as I change from German to English in the frontend of the website, the siteUrl changes, too, so that the styles and scripts can't be found anymore.

Is there another global variable, like {root_url} in expressionengine, which returns only the URL of the primary website or the root URL, regardless of the chosen language or site?

thanks!

Answer 1

You can define whatever aliases/environment variables you like. In this case, I'd probably define an environment variable in my .env file like this:

BASE_WEB=http://example.com

And then in config/general.php I'd add an alias:

<?php
/**
 * General Configuration
 *
 * All of your system's general configuration settings go in here. You can see a
 * list of the available settings in vendor/craftcms/cms/src/config/GeneralConfig.php.
 *
 * @see craft\config\GeneralConfig
 */

return [
    // Craft config settings from .env variables
    'aliases' => [
        '@baseWeb' => getenv('BASE_WEB'),
    ],
];

And then to use this in a template, you'd just do:

{{ alias('@baseWeb/assets/css/main.css') }}

...and away you go. To learn more, check out the Flat Multi-Environment Config for Craft CMS 3 article.