Yoav Niran has written and blogged about another great Tridion GUI extension.  This time  providing a really elegant solution for developers/users that need to see the full XML content of an given item without having to (in my case) faff about with ID’s, Paths or templates.

I can’t think of any project where at some point in the build I’ve needed to check the item’s XML, usually to get a path, check check security or some other content related detail.

My solutions to this have varied depending on the situation:

A custom template – A small bit of code as a Tridion page template, where the TCM is added directly into the code, which is going into the Tridion database and returns XML.  Essentially update the code with the new TCMID and preview the page.  This is fine but it’s a bit slow in terms of updating and previewing.

Webdav – Great, but  this only works when you want to view components, schema and templates.

Using the windows run menu – Entering the item TCM ID in the windows run menu will bring back the given items XML, this is great, but only works if you’re on the actual CM machine.

Thanks Yoav’s, this is a fantastic solution, plus all of the above are now redundant!

What would be cool if these could be part of the installed GUI with configurable security to only show this to members of a certain group and to hide from others that simply don’t need it.