String Writer

Get TcmId from web dav url

visvabalaji — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:52:43 +0000

Many of tridion developer would have tried to get tcm id from web dav. This might be one of the common scenarios where we are using web dav when we are rendering embedded components (in another component template).

I think this is simple scenario so I’m just sharing C# code snippet for this. I’m posting this snippet becoz somebody was googling this yesterday ))


IdentifiableObject identifiableObject = engine.GetObject("<>");
package.PushItem("TCMID", package.CreateStringItem(ContentType.Text, identifiableObject.Id));

Dreaweaver templating in Tridion

visvabalaji — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:27:36 +0000

Unless we are familiar with XSLT, I believe, most of us would prefer developing Dreamweaver TBB (DWT) for CT/PT layout!

So just thought of sharing basic Dreamweaver syntax which are commonly used anyway. There are few Dreamweaver extensions are available, developed by Tridion Community, to simplify and enhance DWT templating. But I didn’t get a chance to work on these extensions. So below code syntax would work without any DWT extensions.

I’ve created few simple building blocks for this DWT example.

Schema & Component

Below is the sample content created based on a simple schema. So assume that component will have this below content.


				
					Thotta
					thotta
					Tamil
				
				TwiTamils
				This post is to discuss about active twitters.
				
					Sathish
					sathm
					Tamil
				
				
					Nuno
					nunolinhares
					Tridion
				
				
					Sowbarnika
					sowmi_
					Tamil
				
				
					Srinivasan
					DKCBE
					Tamil
				
				
					Alvin Reyes
					Nivlong
					Tridion

And the component layout is defined in DWT as follows


@@Component.Fields.Title@@
 by @@Component.Fields.Author.Name@@
 @@Component.Fields.Body@@


 
  Tweeters
  Tamil Tweeters
 
 
  
   
     @@Name@@
   
   
	@@Name@@
   
  
  
   
	@@Name@@

Using template builder, we would need to execute this component template against the above component and that would render the output as,

TwiTamils

by
Thotta

This post is to discuss about active twitters.

Tweeters	Tamil Tweeters
Sathish Nuno Sowbarnika Srinivasan Alvin Reyes	Sathish Sowbarnika Srinivasan

Accessing a field value

There are many ways to retrieve the field of a component : @@Component.Fields.<field name>@@ or @@<field name>@@ or ${field name}.

Calling simply the field name, like @@Title@@, would work but we should be clear that the same field name was not used on CT/PT level. Otherwise it would return title of the component template since Title is the default attribute for Component Template also.

It’s always better to use full path like @@Component.Fields.Title@@.

Accessing sub field’s value

If embedded schema’s field needs to be accessed, we can extend the call by adding the sub field name.

As you can see in the above component xml source of a component, Name is the sub field of Author. So it can be accessed like

@@Component.Fields.Author.Name@@

Accessing a value from Collection

If there are any collection of fields, that can be looped using TemplateBeginRepeat. In the above content, Tweeters is the collection , the sub fields can be accessed inside the loop.



   Name: @@Name@@
   Handle : @@TwitterHandle@@

Please note that the sub fields cannot be called like Component.Fields.Tweeters.Name as it cannot navigate right through the Component.

I wish to have something like Component.Fields.Tweeters[0].Name … Component.Fields.Tweeters[3].Name… but unfortunately, it won’t work

Getting loop index

When we are iterating a collection, obviously we would require to have an index of the loop. Unlike other languages, we can’t declare any variables here but Dreamweaver provides a default variable (TemplateRepeatIndex) which holds the index value of the loop.

@@ TemplateRepeatIndex@@ -> this will print the index value on the page.

Conditional loop

Dreamweaver also provides conditional loop which is similar to If conditions in other languages.



  ….

For example,

If I want to render a footer component on bottom of the page, we can try something like



   
     @@RenderComponentPresentation(Component.ID, ComponentTemplate.ID)@@

Hope this helps for beginners!

Publication URL TBB

visvabalaji — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:49:19 +0000

In most cases, you will not be publishing the binary files (images/css/js) in the same location of where you publish pages. As a good practice, these external files will be stored in separate folders. In such cases, you will need to specify path (relative) in the page DWT template.

Generally external css files will be declared like

This would work only if you have styles folder immediately after server path.

http:///styles/main.css

In Tridion, default publication URL is “/” but if you have specified any path in the Publication, you will need to append that path also. It should be accessed like.

http:////styles/main.css

The below C# TBB will get the publication URL of the current publication.


//gets the current session object
 Session session = engine.GetSession();
 //gets page object from the package
 Item item = package.GetByType(ContentType.Page);
 //gets TcmUri object of Page
 TcmUri tcmObj = new TcmUri(item.GetValue("ID"));
 //generate tcm string format with publication id
 string publicationId = string.Format("tcm:0-{0}-1", tcmObj.PublicationId);
 //gets publication object from the current session
 Publication publication = new Publication(new TcmUri(publicationId), session);
 //writes the publication URL into the package
 package.PushItem("PublicationUrl", package.CreateStringItem(ContentType.Text, publication.PublicationUrl));

As you aware, variable “PublicationUrl” will be included in the package so this variable is accessible when you include this TBB on your page template.
Now you need to call this variable on the page DWT like below,

C# Algorithms

visvabalaji — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:25:38 +0000

Since I was a developer from the early days, I was always fond of writing algorithms. But I agree that I’m not an expert in writing algorithms. But it’s just my interest to learn it, learn from basics. Since I’m so interested in mathematics and algorithms, I’m still having all the materials I’ve used in my school. I’m so comfortable to refer those materials again as I’ve already studied them. As usual, C# will be preferred language!

I don’t know if that’s gonna help my career. Since I moved to Portal & Content Management stream, I moved away from writing-code phase! Learning algorithms was my primary objective to start this blog…! it’s good that I’m starting to learn at least now!

Could not load the Tomcat server configuration

visvabalaji — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:47:46 +0000

Another basic issue I got when I tried to start the server. Initially I was getting the below error,

Could not load the Tomcat server configuration at \Servers\Tomcat v7.0 Server at localhost-config. The configuration may be corrupt or incomplete.
Resource is out of sync with the file system: ‘/Servers/Tomcat v7.0 Server at localhost-config/server.xml’.

I still don’t know whats actual issue but I deleted the existing server from “Servers” tab and recreated it. Now it works!

Change Tomcat Installation directory

visvabalaji — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:33:33 +0000

As I’m new to JAVA, I find difficult to configure Tomcat or Eclispe. This might be very basic to experienced JAVA users but this post of meant for beginners!

After I installed Tomcat 7.0.22 with Eclispe, I was not able to start the server, It throws “The specified Tomcat installation directory does not exist.”. I remember that I’ve renamed the installation directory after I installed eclipse. In such case, we can change the installation directory.

Go to Menu -> Preferences -> Server -> Runtime Environments

There you will see all the runtimes installed on your server. Select the runtime you want to change and select “Edit”.

Here we can change the installation directory in “Tomcat installation directory” field.

That’s it. It works!

Validate Web service in C#

visvabalaji — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:23:04 +0000

I’ve got many web services to read IMDB content. Some of them are failed to access while testing. So I needed to check whether they are really active before accessing them.

Here’s the code snippet to check any website/web services are active.


public bool IsWebServiceActive(string webServicePath)
{
  try
  {
     WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(webServicePath);

     return ((HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse()).StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK;;
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
     Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
     return false;
  }
}

Update registry files using C#

visvabalaji — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:04:12 +0000

When I was doing my IMDB app, I found some of the code snippets are frequently used for desktop applications. Here’s the one code sample.

I was having all my registry settings in .reg file instead of adding each entry through code. All we need to do is run this reg file through code.


string filePath = "IMDBSettings.reg";
.
.
.
Process.Start("regedit.exe", "/s " + filePath).WaitForExit();

Get object types in C#/Tridion 2009

visvabalaji — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 04:10:49 +0000

In C#, the general usage to identify the object type is using “is” keyword. This is okay to some extent but you have to write “switch” of “if”, for multiple types. If there are more object types, code will be lengthy. Recently I came across a easy way of checking the object’s type. This is helpful when the object is of COM type.

Just add the below reference in your project and call its TypeName method.


using Microsoft.VisualBasic;
.
.
.
.
.
public string GetTypeOf(object obj)
{
   return Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information.TypeName(obj);
}

Output:

This was very handy for me in my migration project where I needed to write all the object details in log file.

Iterate all Inner Exceptions in C#

visvabalaji — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:43:45 +0000

In simple applications or pages, handling an exception will not be a difficult task. But when your application is using any web services or threading, most of the time, actual exception details will be stored in InnerException of the main Exception object. In such cases, we need to iterate all the inner exceptions to get the actual error message.

Here is a code snippet to iterate all inner exceptions from the root Exception object.


private List GetAllErrMessages(Exception ex)
{
   List messages = new List();
   //assign the current exception as first object and then loop through its
   //inner exceptions till they are null
   for(Exception eCurrent = ex.Exception; eCurrent != null; eCurrent = eCurrent.InnerException)
   {
      messages.Add(eCurrent.Message);
   }
}

My team said they never saw any code like handling Exception objects using for loop. I don’t know but I learnt this from my lead when I was working on Adrenalin HRMS product. Just sharing the code for your review