Following my blog post from earlier this week where I showed how to make SignalR work in Sitecore SPEAK, I thought of another solution to the same issue which is much more streamlined with SPEAK. The issue which I hacked my way through was that the RequireJS implementation in SPEAK requires that a JavaScript file ends with .js if it does not then .js will be added automatically. ...
Sitecore 7 comes with it’s new Content Search API. The title of this post is self explanatory for what i’m about to share. Scenario I assume I have a website that contains information about different publishers books. These books are imported into Sitecore in XML format. I assume that on the website a user should be able to find content from these documents by performing a search. So I want to create an index that will index the contents of these books. Later I want to perform searches on Authors, Book names, Publishers, and clear text. A possibility is to index the pages of the books separately, so when the results are returned you know not only the book where the specific word or phrase has been found but also the exact page. ...
Following this great post by my colleague Alan I came up with an idea on how to improve the SPEAK pipelines concept. The main problem with the pipelines as they are in Sitecore 7.1 is that there is no way to add or remove processors without making changes in JavaScript code. You can’t even change the order in which they are added without changing their priority in code (see Alan’s blog post). ...
The ListControl in SPEAK is made as a generic control for showing lists. Data is fed into the list using a datasource component as shown in my previous post here. In this post I will show how to define the columns in a ListControl and setup the rendering on a SPEAK page. It is kind of similar to how it was done in the “old” version of SPEAK which has been used for ECM 2 (as one of the only concepts which has been kept in the new version). ...
In SPEAK a list is fed with data through a data source. For example to get data into a ListControl the Items rendering parameter on the ListControl has to be bound to a collection on a datasource. When the items model attribute changes, that is when the datasource changes, then the ListControl automatically refreshes and shows the new data. SPEAK ships with 3 different data sources which are all made for Sitecore items. ...
During the Sitecore Hackathon we decided to implement a chat app for Sitecore editors so it is possible to send text messages to other online editors. To do this we wanted to use SignalR and SPEAK for the UI part. Setting up SignalR and creating the SPEAK layout was done quickly but it quickly became obvious that using the two together could be trickier than anticipated. The issue was not with SPEAK itself or SignalR but with RequireJS and the order in which Javascript is loaded. ...
After writing my previous post about Sitecore SPEAK rules magic I got really excited when I realized how extremely easy it is to add new actions and conditions to the SPEAK rules engine. So here goes. To make any real sense of this post I would suggest that you start reading from my first post about SPEAK if you haven’t read the previous posts already. ...
At this time of year everyone is speaking about Christmas magic, but today I will show you some SPEAK magic using rules. Following the example I gave in my last post where we made a text clickable and then changed the background color depending on the click, now let us make a rule which hides the control when count is equal to let say 22. Setting up the Sitecore SPEAK rule First we create a folder called Rules beneath the StartPage PageSettings item and in this folder we create a RuleDefinition item which we call HideControlRule. ...
This post is the fourth and final in a series about Sitecore SPEAK components. Now we have seen how a SPEAK component is built in part 1, 2, and 3. In this post I will show a full example of a really simple custom control. Why create a Custom SPEAK component anyway? Sitecore delivers 70++ SPEAK controls and components which should cover most needs, but in some cases you might want something completely domain specific in your SPEAK application which cannot be achieved with the standard controls. ...
This post is the third in a series about Sitecore SPEAK components. A SPEAK control rendering can be implemented in two ways. Simple approach, the control consists of a Razor view, a Javascript file and potentially some styling. Advanced approach, consist of the same as the simple approach with two C# classes and some extension method added. If databound properties are inherited from a base component then using the Advanced Approach can save some plumbing code. But this is also at the cost of lower flexibility and readability. ...