Mark van Aalst » Sitecore

Using JQuery in custom fields

Mark — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:27:38 +0000

At the moment I’m creating a custom field for tagging content items. I prototyped my custom field in html using JQuery. But when I wanted to convert this to the actual custom field I ran into a problem. As you might know Sitecore uses the Prototype library for all of it’s javascript. And prototype uses the same dollar sign for all of its functions and variables as JQuery does. But JQuery provides a noConflict function where you can reassign the default $.

But then came the next challenge. I needed to use the noConflict function before all other javascript was called. Luckally I remembered that I have seen it before in other custom fields that are on the Shared Source environment. So I started browsing the source code of Alexey Rusakov’s project (Sitecore Fieldtypes) and I found the InjectScripts class which provides an option to add HTML to the section of the Content Editor. There I just added a reference to my JQuery library and off course calling the .noConflict funtion.


namespace Sitecore.SharedSource.Taxonomy
{
class AddScripts
{
public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
{
if (Sitecore.Context.ClientPage.IsEvent)
return;

HttpContext context = HttpContext.Current;
if (context == null)
return;

Page page = context.Handler as Page;
if (page == null)
return;

Assert.IsNotNull(page.Header, "Content Editor  tag is missing runat='value'");

string[] scripts = new[]
{
"/sitecore modules/Shell/Taxonomy/jquery-1.4.1.min.js"
};

foreach (string script in scripts)
{
page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("".FormatWith(script)));
page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(""));
}
}

}
}

So now I can call my JQuery by using “jQuery” in stead of “$” and the field works.

In my opinion this is just an example of how the Shared Source environment can help you. So if you have created a module, field or any thing else please put it on the Shared Source environment so others can benefit from it.

Restricting FieldEditor to specific template based items

Mark — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:28:04 +0000

In Sitecore 6.2 it is possible to integrate FieldEditors. These are command which enables users edit item settings when they work in the page editor. Personally I think it is a great option when you want editors to only work within the Page Editor, and still let them edit settings.
For the blog module that I created I implemented two FieldEditorCommands which let the user edit the blog and entry settings. When you use the default implementation as described in one of the cookbooks users can always click on the ribbon button regarding if the fields are on the currentitem. When those field don not exist on that item, they just get a empty popup.
I decided to restrict the option only to items which are based on a certain template. You can do this the following way:
You’ll need to override the Execute method in the your class (which overrides from Sitecore.Shell.Applications.WebEdit.Commands.FieldEditorCommand).

Then you isolate the function Context.ClientPage.Start in for instance an if statement.

Example:

if (context.Items[0].TemplateID == new ID(Settings.Default.EntryTemplateID))
{
Context.ClientPage.Start(this, "StartFieldEditor", args);
}
else
{
Context.ClientPage.ClientResponse.Alert("Please select an entry first");
}

If anyone else has a better way to get the same results please let me know.

Creating a Item Editor

Mark — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:55:03 +0000

For a blog module that I am developing I wanted to create an custom item editor. As you might know those are the “tabs” in the Content Editor.

1. Create a aspx file for the item editor user interface.
2. Select the core database in the desktop mode
3. Open the Content Editor and go to the following path /Sitecore/Content/Applications/Content Editor/Editors/Items.
4. You can create an item editor using the /Sitecore Client/Content Editor/Editor data template.
5. You can give your item editor a name using the header field in the data section.
6. In the icon field you can enter a path to the icon.
7. In the url field you need to fill in the url to the aspx file created in step 1
8. Save the item.
9. Switch back to the master database.

Now we have created the item and the user-interface for the Item Editor. The next step is to assign the item editor to a template.

10. You can do this by setting it on the standard values or a individual item. Open the item in the content editor or template manager.
11 . Click on the configure tab, go to the appearance group and click the editor command. A dialog will appear.
12. In this dialog you can select the item editor you want to use, using the arrows you can sort.
13. Finally close the dialog and save and publish.

Now when you select a item based on this template you see a item editor in the content editor with the title you filled in. You can edit the item editor using normal ASP.Net controls. This is a great solution for creating custom reports. But when you want to create an real custom editor functionality, you would like to use the default save button of the content editor. I might be confusing for a end-user to have two save button in one screen.

Unfortunately, Sitecore provides no default solution for capturing that event. Thanks to Eugene Omelnitsky from Sitecore Support (for pointing me in the right direction) I found a solution. You can adapt to the Save event using javascript. I then used JQuery to do an ajax call to the server and execute my save method.

This is the Javascript function which captures the save event and triggers an ajax call to my page method.

And this is the method that I use server side

[System.Web.Services.WebMethod]
public static void SaveItem(string entryid, string introduction, string content, string title)
{
Database master = Factory.GetDatabase("master");

Item currentItem = ItemManager.GetItem(new ID(entryid), Sitecore.Context.Language, Sitecore.Data.Version.Latest, master);
Entry currentEntry = new Entry(currentItem);

currentEntry.BeginEdit();
currentEntry.Title = title;
currentEntry.Introduction = introduction;
currentEntry.Text = content;
currentEntry.EndEdit();
}

The code above is not perfect, it needs a bit more flexibility but for testing purposes it works.

New search for SDN

Mark — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:47:02 +0000

I just noticed that Sitecore has greatly improved their search on SDN. You can now search through SDN, the shared source and Sitecore blogs.You even can filter your results by sdn sections, collections and datatypes.

Only minor is that I can’t find a list of blogs they included in the search, so for that I will use my own search.

Maximum number of Sitecore query items

Mark — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:47:16 +0000

Last week I had some problems with an Sitecore Query. It didn’t show more than an fixed number of items. After some hard thinking I rembered that there is a web.config key called Query.MaxItem which, you might guessed it, controls the maximum number of results of an Sitecore Query.

Using profile with the Rich Text Editor

Mark — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:36:39 +0000

Regularly I see topics on the SDN5 forums where people ask if it is possible to use a custom Rich Text editor. Wll, yes it is. You can use so called profiles with the Rich Text editor. These profiles are stored in the Core database under /sitecore/system/Settings/Html Editor Profiles/. There are some default pre-configurated profile which you van duplicate and customize to your own needs.

To use these profile you need to set the source value of an rich text field in your template.

Disable Sitecore publishing

Mark — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:49:45 +0000

To avoid problems during the development of an Sitecore site it could be useful to disable the Sitecore Publishing method.

This can be done by editing the following web.config rule:

These are the settings of your current site. The database key contains the database name from where the site needs to get its content. By setting this to the master database you do not need to publish your content anymore.

Copy & Paste Layout Settings

Mark — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:55:44 +0000

While developing a Sitecore website there are lots of situations where you want multiple items to have the same Presentation Settings (renderings/sublayouts/layout). The ideal case is that your item Masters have these settings included but sometimes this isn’t the case.

You can copy and paste the settings all at one time this way:

1. Navigate to the source item in the Content Editor (or Template Manager)

2. On the ‘View’ Ribbon (Menu tab on top of the screen) select Standard Fields and Raw Values

3. Copy the (raw) Renderings field value (in the layout section of the content of the item)

4. Paste it into the destination item Renderings Field.

5. Disable Raw values and standard fields if necessary.

There also is a (unsupported) Sitecore Module for this action. Check it out Layout copy pastehere.

Sitecore Validation Rules

Mark — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:53:19 +0000

In Sitecore you can use validation rules. By default there are three validations rules on each template:

Is Integer
Max Length 40
Requirer

You can modify or add new rules in the sitecore\system\settings\validation\field section in the content editor

With the use of an multilist you can set the rules for your template.

ATTENTION: Validation rules are already built in for version 5.3.1 but you can’t use them. Therefore you need to upgrade to version 5.3.2, which costs about an our. You can use regular expressions in version 5.3.1

Rich Text Editor

Mark — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:50:02 +0000

One of the most annoying things about Sitecore is that the Rich Text Editor needs to be opent in an seperate web page dialog.

But you can customize this behavior!

Go to the Control Panel > Preferences > Change Your Application Options
Tab Rich Text Editor
Select editable

You see that the Content Editor got expanded with the tab “Rich Text”