Configuration Component

The configuration component is a simple content schema which allows the embedding of ‘Key/Value‘ pairs.  This is easily achieved using SDL Tridion’s embedded schemas.

With the following simple text fields:

A configuration component can now be created based on this schema, as shown below:

Great, so now what we need is a way to map the key value from our component to the value placed into the rich-text field thanks to our GUI extension.

Resolving the dynamic label

There are two main ways to resolve this content:

Rendering / Resolving At publish time

To achieve this we have a Template Building Block that parses the rendered content which finds all $$keywords$$ within the content stored in the configuration component.

The main advantage of this implementation is that it is really easy to manipulate the rendered content in SDL Tridion and quickly build this functionality.

The massive disadvantage is that should a dynamic value change, then you will need to republish any page that makes use of it.

Should you wish to go down this route, the following snippets will be relevant in your TBB code:

foreach (Match matchingElement in Regex.Matches(outPut, @"(\$\$[^\$]+\$\$)"))
{
    string resolvedVariable = GetReplacementValue(rlContent, xmlNsMgr, matchingElement.Value);
    Logger.Info("replacing variable: " + matchingElement.Value + " with : " + resolvedVariable);
}

The variables to note are:

• outPut -  is the actual output item from template package
• rlContent – the replacement Component object – mine is passed to the package from the publication metadata via another TBB.
• @”(\$\$[^\$]+\$\$)”) – The regular expression to find all $$keyword$$ values in the output – (note: I wouldn’t actually recommend the $$ as the identifier, but this was legacy :))
• GetReplacementValue() – The function which searches the component for the actual replaceable value.

private string GetReplacementValue(XmlDocument contentXml, XmlNamespaceManager ns, string value)
{
 XmlNode replacementKeyNode = contentXml.SelectSingleNode("descendant::replacement_values[replacement_key='" + value + "']/replacement_value", ns);
 return replacementKeyNode.Value;
}

Note: The above snippet includes a lot of stripped out code checking and error reporting to make it easier to see the replacement.

Code this all up and upload into SDL Tridion as a new TBB, which can then be ran against your content.

I typically drop it my own ‘Default Finish Actions’ TBB, but at the end of a Page Template should do the trick

Rendering / resolving at presentation time

Resolving at publish time is definitely the way to go with this sort of implementation.  It’s better to edit the content, publish the configuration, then have your website / application perform the rendering.  Here’s how we’ve done it in our .NET website.

• The configuration component such is associated to a component template that is publishing out as an XML document.

   

• Our SDL Tridion dynamic variables are parsed by the TBB into a .NET <asp:literal id=”company_name” runat=”server”> Note: be sure you catch if you use the same term more than once in your output.
• The .NET application supplies a literal value by looking up the content from the published XML.