How to Use TYPO3 Context to Improve Environment?

1st step to creating a TYPO3 context, You will need to define “TYPO3_CONTEXT” at your favorite web-server, Let’s see how!

What are the ways to define TYPO3 Context in the Apache webserver?

You can configure the TYPO3 context with different ways in the Apache web server as below.

Option #1 Using Apache’s SetEnv Directive
Contact your server administrator to create SetEnv Apache’s configuration, Here are some examples.

# Define main TYPO3 context
SetEnv TYPO3_CONTEXT Development

# Define domain-wise main TYPO3 context
SetEnvIf Host www\.t3terminal\.com$ TYPO3_CONTEXT=Production
SetEnvIf Host testing\.t3terminal\.com$ TYPO3_CONTEXT=Testing
SetEnvIf Host dev\.t3terminal\.local$ TYPO3_CONTEXT=Development

Option #2 Using .Htaccess or mod_rewrite
If you are using the Apache server with shared hosting, you can also define TYPO3_CONTEXT with .htaccess or mode_rewrite vhost.

# In your Apache configuration (either .htaccess or vhost)
# you can either set a context to static value with:
SetEnv TYPO3_CONTEXT Development

# Or set context depending on the current host header
# using mod_rewrite module

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^dev\.t3terminal\.com$
RewriteRule .? - [E=TYPO3_CONTEXT:Development]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^staging\.t3terminal\.com$
RewriteRule .? - [E=TYPO3_CONTEXT:Production/Staging]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.t3terminal\.com$
RewriteRule .? - [E=TYPO3_CONTEXT:Production]

# or using setenvif module
SetEnvIf Host "^dev\.t3terminal\.com$" TYPO3_CONTEXT=Development
SetEnvIf Host "^staging\.t3terminal\.com$" TYPO3_CONTEXT=Production/Staging
SetEnvIf Host "^www\.t3terminal\.com$" TYPO3_CONTEXT=Production

Option #3 TYPO3_Context without .Htaccess
If somehow you don’t have access to modify with .htaccess or mode_rewrite, you can try this solution TYPO3 Context without .Htaccess (Note: Not tested by me yet).

How can we configure TYPO3 Context in NGNIX?

Many people have started to work with NGNIX which is really great, You can easily configure NGNIX configuration as below.

location ~ \.php$ {
  include         fastcgi_params;
 fastcgi_index   index.php;
 fastcgi_param   TYPO3_CONTEXT  Development/Dev;
  fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}

How to set up the TYPO3 Context in Docker + DDEV?

TYPO3 community loves DDEV solution as a local development environment, we love too :) You can simply configure TYPO3_CONTEXT in Docker/DDEV with the below steps.

Step 1. Create docker-compose context file into your .ddev folder

touch .ddev/docker-compose.context.yaml

Step 2. Add the below configuration to the file

version: '3.6'
services:
   web:
    environment:
- TYPO3_CONTEXT=Development

Step 3. Restart your DDEV

ddev restart

Well done! I hope you have successfully configured the TYPO3_CONTEXT variable to your web-server, local development environment, and/or TYPO3-CLI.

Now, Are you excited about how easy it is to use TYPO3_CONTEXT in real-life TYPO3 applications features, some examples likes;

• Each TYPO3 environment should have a separate TYPO3 site URL (through config.yaml).
• Each TYPO3 environment should have a separate Database configuration (through AdditionalConfiguration.php).
• Each TYPO3 environment may have different templating execution (through TypoScript)
• And so on, based on your TYPO3 application needs you can use TYPO3_CONTEX

One of the most important to use TYPO3_CONTEXT is to define multiple database configurations for each of your TYPO3 environments.

TYPO3 provides developer-friendly features to get the current TYPO3 application context.

// Since TYPO3 9LTS
\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Core\Environment::getContext()

// Prior to TYPO3 9LTS
\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::getApplicationContext()

You can easily achieve it by adding PHP-code to your AdditionalConfiguration.php, Here is the sample.

// typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php
<?php
switch (\TYPO3\CMS\Core\Core\Environment::getContext()) {
    case 'Development':
        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['displayErrors'] = 1;
        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['devIPmask'] = '*';

        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default'] = array_merge(
            isset($GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default'])
            ? $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default']
            : [],
            [
                'dbname' => 'db',
                'host' => 'db',
                'password' => 'db',
                'port' => '3306',
                'user' => 'db',
            ]
        );
        break;

    case 'Production':
        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['displayErrors'] = 0;
        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['devIPmask'] = '192.168.1.*';

        $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default'] = array_merge(
            isset($GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default'])
            ? $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default']
            : [],
            [
                'dbname' => 'project',
                'host' => '127.0.0.1',
                'password' => 'password',
                'port' => '3306',
                'user' => 'user',
            ]
        );
        break;
}

And the last one, Based on your needs uses “applicationContext” Symfony expression TypoScript to check the TYPO3 context environment.

There can be a number of practical examples eg., At production server, you can enable compress javascript files, while development should have disabled such compression ;)

# Check in Production/Live
[applicationContext = Production/Live]
   config.contentObjectExceptionHandler = 0
   config {
      compressJS = 1
      concatenateJS = 1
   }
[end]

# Check in Development mode
[applicationContext = Development]
   config.contentObjectExceptionHandler = 1
   config {
      compressJS = 0
      concatenateJS = 0
   }
[end]

# Check in more then one TYPO3 context by “,” comma separated
[applicationContext = Development/Debugging, Development/ClientA]
  [...]
[end]

# Check with regular expression to match your TYPO3 context
[applicationContext = /^Development\/Preview\/d+$/]
   [...]
[end]

I’ve found one TYPO3 extension which is related to TYPO3_CONTEXT. By d way, I’ve not tested this extension. If you know it well, share your experience in the comment box.

TYPO3 context configuration loader (EXT:context_loader)

A simple TYPO3 configuration loader to create and configure your TYPO3 context environment into /typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration/

Thanks for reading the article.

I’m doing my best to keep a simple and easy guide blog for you, I hope you learn with fun :) Let’s quickly recap the article.

• Understand and figure out why and how you require the TYPO3 Context feature? You should prepare where you should implement the TYPO3 context.
• Make sure, Your web server (like Apache, NGINX) is ready and configured with the TYPO3 context.
• Start to implement application-level TYPO3 context with PHP, TypoScript, YAML eg., Multiple database configuration, Site-URLs, etc.

Do you have any experience with the TYPO3 context? Or, Any questions to implement the TYPO3 context? I would love to receive your experience to keep improving such small but cool TYPO3 features.

Have a Happy TYPO3 Contexting!