View Helper - Sitemap

Introduction

The Sitemap helper is used for generating XML sitemaps, as defined by the Sitemaps XML format. Read more about Sitemaps on Wikipedia.

By default, the sitemap helper uses sitemap validators to validate each element that is rendered. This can be disabled by calling $helper->setUseSitemapValidators(false).

Note

If you disable sitemap validators, the custom properties (see table) are not validated at all.

The sitemap helper also supports Sitemap XSD Schema validation of the generated sitemap. This is disabled by default, since it will require a request to the Schema file. It can be enabled with $helper->setUseSchemaValidation(true).

Sitemap XML elements

Element	Description
loc	Absolute URL to page. An absolute URL will be generated by the helper.
lastmod	The date of last modification of the file, in W3C Datetime format. This time portion can be omitted if desired, and only use YYYY-MM-DD. The helper will try to retrieve the lastmod value from the page’s custom property lastmod if it is set in the page. If the value is not a valid date, it is ignored.
changefreq	How frequently the page is likely to change. This value provides general information to search engines and may not correlate exactly to how often they crawl the page. Valid values are: alwayshourlydailyweeklymonthlyyearlynever The helper will try to retrieve the changefreq value from the page’s custom property changefreq if it is set in the page. If the value is not valid, it is ignored.
priority	The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site. Valid values range from 0.0 to 1.0. The helper will try to retrieve the priority value from the page’s custom property priority if it is set in the page. If the value is not valid, it is ignored.

Methods in the sitemap helper:

• {get|set}FormatOutput() gets/sets a flag indicating whether XML output should be formatted. This corresponds to the formatOutput property of the native DOMDocument class. Read more at PHP: DOMDocument - Manual. Default is FALSE.
• {get|set}UseXmlDeclaration() gets/sets a flag indicating whether the XML declaration should be included when rendering. Default is TRUE.
• {get|set}UseSitemapValidators() gets/sets a flag indicating whether sitemap validators should be used when generating the DOM sitemap. Default is TRUE.
• {get|set}UseSchemaValidation() gets/sets a flag indicating whether the helper should use XML Schema validation when generating the DOM sitemap. Default is FALSE. If TRUE.
• {get|set}ServerUrl() gets/sets server URL that will be prepended to non-absolute URLs in the url() method. If no server URL is specified, it will be determined by the helper.
• url() is used to generate absolute URLs to pages.
• getDomSitemap() generates a DOMDocument from a given container.

Basic usage

This example shows how to render an XML sitemap based on the setup we did further up.

// In a view script or layout:

// format output
$this->navigation()
      ->sitemap()
      ->setFormatOutput(true); // default is false

// other possible methods:
// ->setUseXmlDeclaration(false); // default is true
// ->setServerUrl('http://my.otherhost.com');
// default is to detect automatically

// print sitemap
echo $this->navigation()->sitemap();

Notice how pages that are invisible or pages with ACL roles incompatible with the view helper are filtered out:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/faq</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/editions</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/requirements</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio/customers</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio/support</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about/investors</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/news</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/news/press</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/archive</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/community</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/community/account</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://forums.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Rendering using no ACL role

Render the sitemap using no ACL role (should filter out /community/account):

echo $this->navigation()
          ->sitemap()
          ->setFormatOutput(true)
          ->setRole();

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/faq</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/editions</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server/requirements</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio/customers</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio/support</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about/investors</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/news</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/news/press</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/archive</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/community</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://forums.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Rendering using a maximum depth

Render the sitemap using a maximum depth of 1.

echo $this->navigation()
          ->sitemap()
          ->setFormatOutput(true)
          ->setMaxDepth(1);

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/server</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/studio</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/about/investors</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/company/news</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/community</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/community/account</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://forums.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Note

UTF-8 encoding used by default

By default, Zend Framework uses UTF-8 as its default encoding, and, specific to this case, Zend\View does as well. So if you want to use another encoding with Sitemap, you will have do three things:

1. Create a custom renderer and implement a getEncoding() method;
2. Create a custom rendering strategy that will return an instance of your custom renderer;
3. Attach the custom strategy in the ViewEvent;

See the example from **headStile** documentation to see how you can achieve this.