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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Over 70 incredibly effective and practical recipes to get you up and running with Sitecore development
About This Book
- Build enterprise-level rich websites quickly and deliver the best possible content management to your website
- Get maximum usage of functionalities like different user interfaces, workflow, publishing, search, analytics, etc and learn different rendering techniques using presentation components for data bindings, events, handlers, schedulers, media, etc.
- Add a surprising amount of functionality just by customizing the Sitecore architecture through the best practices contained in this book
Who This Book Is For
If you are a Sitecore developer or a programmer who wants to expand your Sitecore development skills, this book is ideal for you. You will need working knowledge of ASP.NET WebForms or MVC, as well as HTML, and a basic knowledge of Sitecore installation.
What You Will Learn
- Create, access, and personalize your website content using different Sitecore presentation components
- Learn how to extend the presentation components to fulfill some real-life requiremnts such as improving the site's performance, generating Rss feeds and so on
- Work with multiple websites on a single Sitecore instance and create multilingual websites
- Customize the Sitecore interfaces as per your business requirements to provide easier and error-free user interface to content authors to save time and improve accuracy
- Customize the Sitecore backend architecture as per your business needs
- Automate tasks and achieve scalability by altering the development and configuration settings
- Integrate external systems with Sitecore to import or export content and secure user interactions
- Integrate the advanced features of analytics and personalization, to get the best possible customer experience and generate its reports
In Detail
This book will get you started on building rich websites, and customizing user interfaces by creating content management applications quickly. It will give you an insight into web designs and how to customize the Sitecore architecture as per your website's requirements using best practices.
Packed with over 70 recipes to help you achieve and solve real-world common tasks, requirements, and the problems of content management, content delivery, and publishing instance environments. It also presents recipes on Sitecore's backend processes of customizing pipelines, creating custom event handler and media handler, setting hooks and more. Other topics covered include creating a workflow action, publishing sublayouts and media files, securing your environment by customizing user profiles and access rights, boosting search capabilities, optimising performance, scalability and high-availability of Sitecore instances and much more.
By the end of this book, you will have be able to add virtually limitless features to your websites by developing and deploying Sitecore efficiently.
Style and approach
This easy-to-follow guide is full of hands-on recipes on real-world development tasks to improve your existing Sitecore system. Each topic is presented with its benefits and detailed steps to achieve it through well-explained code and images.
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Seitenzahl: 387
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Sitecore Cookbook for Developers
Sitecore Cookbook for Developers
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: April 2016
Production reference: 1260416
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78439-652-7
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Yogesh Patel
Reviewer
Pavel Nezhencev
Commissioning Editor
Amarabha Banerjee
Acquisition Editor
Reshma Raman
Content Development Editor
Pooja Mhapsekar
Technical Editor
Manthan Raja
Copy Editor
Tasneem Fatehi
Project Coordinator
Judie Jose
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Mariammal Chettiyar
Graphics
Disha Haria
Abhinash Sahu
Production Coordinator
Arvindkumar Gupta
Cover Work
Arvindkumar Gupta
About the Author
Yogesh Patel has been programming since the year 2000, and has been working in the IT industry for over ten years on a variety of technologies. He was mainly involved in Sitecore or .NET-based development in the Indian offices of US and UK-based organizations. He has worked at Investis Ltd as a technical architect and has lead a Sitecore development team. Yogesh has held a number of positions and has a lot of responsibilities, having worked at Investis since 2009. He has been recognized as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Sitecore for 2014, 2015, and 2016.
As a developer, Yogesh enjoys learning new programming techniques, practices, and tactics. He has worked on .NET since 2005 and Sitecore since 2009. He has also spent plenty of time developing in C, VC++, MATLAB, VB6, ASP, Java, PHP, AppleScript, SQL, and MySQL, but his current focus is on .NET—especially Sitecore. His blog can be found at http://sitecoreblog.patelyogesh.in. You can find Yogesh on Twitter at @patelyogesh_in, as well as LinkedIn (yspatel) and Facebook (patelyogesh.in).
Avni, my beloved wife and my parents, I thank you for your love, support, and encouragement, without which I would have been unable to carry on this endeavor. I'd particularly like to thank Pavel Nezhencev for reviewing this book. I'd also like to thank my colleagues at Investis, Muktesh Mehta and Siddhi Kabra, for supporting me throughout the project.
About the Reviewer
Pavel Nezhencev is an experienced .NET/JS web developer working in the Denmark department of Creuna, which specializes in creating web platforms for businesses of any scale. Pavel has a bachelor's degree in software engineering from Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics, Ukraine. He worked for five years with Sitecore and Episerver systems and successfully launched several solutions on these platforms.
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Preface
Sitecore Experience Platform (XP), which is more than a content management system (CMS), is global leader in experience management. It continues to be very popular due to its robust framework, continuous innovations, and ease of implementations compared to other CMS available. Developers love Sitecore for its flexibility, scalability, and power. It has great out-of-the-box capabilities, but one of its great strengths is the ease of extending these capabilities.
Sitecore Cookbook for Developers is intended to provide a surprising amount of recipes to use out-of-the-box core capabilities and customize them. It also focuses on helping developers that are new to Sitecore to achieve maximum productivity and satisfaction with minimum efforts. It also includes tips, tricks, and best practices for working with the platform.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Basic Presentation Components, focuses on creating information architecture and presenting it using out-of-the-box components and different Model-View-Controller (MVC) renderings. It also shows how effectively you can utilize out-of-the-box components to provide greater ease and flexibility for future enhancements.
Chapter 2, Extending Presentation Components, gives examples for extending out-of-the-box components to develop multilingual and multidevice websites, integrate the content with external systems, and provide easier content management for content owners.
Chapter 3, Customizing the User Interface Framework, demonstrates you how to create new interfaces or extend existing interfaces, using different framework components. It also provides some recipes to please content authors.
Chapter 4, Leveraging the Sitecore Backend, gets you completely involved in Sitecore backend architecture. This chapter gives you a brief tour of different the features to extend the core engine using pipelines, processors, events, handlers, hooks, jobs, schedulers, and so on.
Chapter 5, Making Content Management More Efficient, shows you different tricks and techniques to manage the content in a better way and provide better usability with the use of backend and frontend frameworks and different functionalities such as dictionary, validations, rule engine, Rich Text Editor, Item Web API, and so on.
Chapter 6, Working with Media, explores different techniques while working with Sitecore media items such as securing them, serving them through content delivery network (CDN), and utilizing them for responsive web designs.
Chapter 7, Workflow and Publishing, shows how you can extend the workflow and publishing architecture to achieve scheduled publishing and unpublishing, using web deploy while publishing and customizing pipeline and events.
Chapter 8, Security, explains how to create different user profiles and give custom permissions to it. It also explains how to achieve single sign-on (SSO) securely and allow extranet access in a secure way.
Chapter 9, Sitecore Search, describes different techniques for accessing data from indexing. It explains how to implement different search techniques, which modern search engines use such as tagging, autosuggest, boosting search results, finding more like this, and did you mean.
Chapter 10, Experience Personalization and Analytics Using xDB, explains how to provide the best user experience using different techniques of real-time personalization, it is the heart of marketing programs. It also briefs features for engaging users. This chapter will also provide good recipes to use and extend Experience Database (xDB) and generate different analytics reports.
Chapter 11, Securing, Scaling, Optimizing, and Troubleshooting, focuses on different techniques for making the Sitecore environment more secure. It also explains techniques to troubleshoot slowness, create clustered environments to get better performance, high availability, and scalability. It also briefs some techniques to troubleshoot.
Appendix A, Getting Started with Sitecore, contains information to help you in Sitecore installation, and create a project for your Sitecore solution using Microsoft Visual Studio.
Appendix B, Tools and Resources for Sitecore Developers, provides information on tools and resources available for Sitecore developers to install, and maximize their productivity and expertise by using it.
What you need for this book
The minimum requirements for this book would be Sitecore 8 or later, .NET Framework 4.5 or later, ASP.NET MVC 5.1 or later, MS SQL 2008 R2 or later, and IIS 7.5 or later. You can refer to Sitecore Compatibility Table at https://goo.gl/4kkCHe for more details.
It is recommended that you use a plain Sitecore setup to implement the recipes of this book in order to avoid unnecessary conflicts with existing implementations.
To download and install Sitecore and create a project, you can refer to Appendix A, Getting Started with Sitecore, which you will find at the end of this book.
Who this book is for
If you are a Sitecore developer or programmer who wants to expand your Sitecore development skills, this book is ideal for you. As this book targets readers of various experience levels, you should be able to find recipes of beginner, intermediate, and advanced nature. You will need working knowledge of ASP.NET WebForms or MVC, as well as HTML, and a basic knowledge of Sitecore installation.
Sections
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
Getting ready
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
How to do it…
This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.
How it works…
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
There's more…
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
See also
This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Make sure that you have added a reference of Sitecore.Kernel.dll and Sitecore.Mvc.dll files to the SitecoreCookbook project."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "From the ribbon, select Standard Values in the Builder Options tab."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the example code
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
You can also download the code files by clicking on the Code Files button on the book's webpage at the Packt Publishing website. This page can be accessed by entering the book's name in the Search box. Please note that you need to be logged in to your Packt account.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/SitecoreCookbookForDevelopers_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/Content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
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We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Basic Presentation Components
In this chapter, we will see how to build pages in Sitecore with the help of different rendering techniques using different Sitecore presentation components. You will learn the following recipes:
Introduction
If you are reading this book, you already know that Sitecore XP (Experience Platform) is not only an enterprise-level content management system (CMS) but also a web framework or web platform. Sitecore has robust and in-depth APIs to offer maximum flexibility to developers to implement custom solutions. It has many features designed to support enterprise-level requirements.
Sitecore provides extensive out-of-the-box components such as layout, device, placeholder, and some rendering controls, which play important role in designing and editing interfaces. We can also develop custom rendering components using Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), ASP.NET Web Forms, and Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks to render content to the pages. All these frameworks currently exist in Sitecore, but MVC is now becoming widely used in Sitecore solutions and also provides better options compared to Web Forms and XSLT. Hence, we will prepare all the recipes using the MVC framework.
This chapter first serves recipes to create rendering components using model, view, and controller, and then explains how we can integrate them with Sitecore's out-of-the-box components. Looking into the depth of presentation components, you will learn extending these components in the next chapter.
Note
For this chapter, it's required that you create a Visual Studio solution. You can refer to Appendix A, Getting Started with Sitecore, which explains how you can set up Sitecore solutions. Make sure that you have added a reference of Sitecore.Kernel.dll and Sitecore.Mvc.dll files to the SitecoreCookbook project.
Creating a simple content page using template and layout
As a developer, you will first have to understand the architecture of how a web page works. To create web pages, you first need to create a data structure using data templates, based on which you can create content items. Layout is used to place content with some presentation logic on it. In this recipe, we will take a quick look at creating a simple content page showing the title, body, logo, and other details.
How to do it…
We will first create and define a data template for the Home item (that is, home page):
Tip
Instead of standard values, you can also assign a layout directly to the Home item. However, it's a recommended practice to apply presentation components to a template's standard values so that all items created from the template will inherit the field values from standard values.
Note
You can get the layout and style sheet files from the code bundle provided with this book to make it work, as shown in the following image:
Tip
Downloading the example code
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
You can also download the code files by clicking on the Code Files button on the book's webpage at the Packt Publishing website. This page can be accessed by entering the book's name in the Search box. Please note that you need to be logged in to your Packt account.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
How it works…
Sitecore layouts are reusable ASP.NET Web Forms (.aspx) or MVC views (.cshtml) that you register with Sitecore. ASP.NET uses Web Forms or views to serve HTTP requests. Here, on requesting the Home item, Sitecore first reads the item and renders the physical file of the layout associated with the item.
In the view file, we used the Sitecore field helper, @Html.Sitecore().Field(<field name>), to render the Title and Body field values from the context item (in our case, Home). This helper method can also render a field of items other than the context item, which we used in order to render the Logo and Copyright Text fields of the Configurations item, @Html.Sitecore().Field(<field name>, Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(<ItemId or path of item>)).
Here, the Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem() method provides the Sitecore.Data.Items.Item object, which has a collection of all the field values associated with the item.
Note
To learn more APIs, download Sitecore Presentation Component API Cookbook (https://goo.gl/fu99Vh). It provides APIs from Sitecore 6.4 or later with examples of Web Forms or Web controls, but they are still valid for Sitecore 8 or later with MVC as well.
Apart from the Content Editor, Sitecore also provides another tool, Experience Editor, to view pages in editing mode. From the ribbon, click on the Experience Editor button in the Publish tab to open an item in the Experience Editor. You can open it from Launch Pad as well. Here, you can change field values (for example, Body in the following image) rendered on the layout or view:
To disable content editing for an item field, you can pass additional parameters to the field helper, as shown in the following code:
You can also customize its rendering behavior by extending the Sitecore helper class. You can learn this from https://goo.gl/ZHruKe and http://goo.gl/Kx8MQl.
