Custom render tags and render spots

[Richard Hauer]

Quick poll: is anyone creating their own custom render tags and render spots for use in RedDot Open Text Web Solutions (Group) Management Server?

 

If so, what kind of things have you made…

 

Regards,

Richard Hauer

====================

5 Limes Pty Limited

www.5Limes.com.au

 

[Tony Gayter]

Is there any documentation on how to do this in the v11 manuals?

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[Richard Hauer]

Nope.

 

I can tell you how to do it if you like.

 

Regards,

Richard Hauer

====================

5 Limes Pty Limited

www.5Limes.com.au

 

[Tony Gayter]

That would be great, they talked about it at a tech meeting I went to at opentext but didnt say anymore about it, I assumed they would document it instead of expecting people to guess. Silly me.

[Joel Kinzel]

I assumed they would document it instead of expecting people to guess. Silly me.

This actually brings up a really important point that OpenText needs to seriously look at. Documentation. In some places it is non-existant, in others the stuff that is provided is next to useless. This is especially true of the documentation for developers. 

[Tim D]

Hi,

There is a write up from one of the R&D Managers on his blog from last summer:

http://websitemanagement.reil-online.de/2011/06/developing-custom-rendertags.html 

I'll check into where this is in the release schedule. Additionally v11 introduced a custom Element API that will be finalized and documented in 11 SP1 or later.

Formal and specific complaints in tickets and ideas on SolutionExchange will help identify where users want more detailed documentation and surface that to the product teams.

Best,

Tim

[Tim D]

Just confirmed this is indeed added to the RQL Documentation in v11.

English version on KC:

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objaction=overview&objid=23076307

Look for "Customization Interfaces" in the left navigation.

Thanks Dennis.

Best,

Tim

[Christoph Straßer]

We successfully implemented one rendertag. Implementing is quite straight forward.
It get's a bit more complicated if you try to call code within a other DLL from your Rendertag-implementation.
Debugging is a bit old school. You implement the rendertag within visual studio on your workstation, deploy it to the server, look at the result and so on... The easiest way to get some debugging-info is to output debug-info as a part of the rendertag-result.

Kind regards,

Christoph

[Richard Hauer]

Hi Christoph,

I can simply attach Visual Studio 2010 remote debugger to the Object service
and can debug in the normal way... does that not work for you?
We attached our RQL library and you can get session and login info from the
Reddot.CMS.SessionState.Session object in the Reddot.CMS library.
If ends up being a bit circuitous you can leverage the infrastructure of
NavigationManager itself to fire off RQL (and database... shhhh) commands
directly.

See:
//database connections...
RedDot.CMS.Data.Proxy.Database.Instance.GetDataProxy().GetDataConnection(2,
projectId); //you can send SQL through this, but you never EVER should (but
you can anyway)

//rql connections...
RedDot.CMS.Rql.RqlServiceProxy.GetRqlService().Execute( rql )

Also, you can turn on RenderTag debugging using the following tag:
<%!! Debug:Set( bool:True ) !!%>

Which sends debugging information to various files inside the ASP\Log
directory.

There is an an object called RedDot.CMS.Globals.DebugLogging which you need
to set to true to get some info logged. The only way I've found to set that
is to create a custom render tag and set it that way. I can't find built-in
wiring to access/set that value (but honestly I haven't looked that hard).
It's probably in a config file.

HTH.

Regards,
Richard Hauer
====================
5 Limes Pty Limited
www.5Limes.com.au

-----Original Message-----
From: reddot-c...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:reddot-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Christoph Straßer
Sent: Wednesday, 4 July 2012 4:18 AM
To: reddot-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Custom render tags and render spots

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[Richard Hauer]

Short answer:

The “shorthand” notation only works for ObjectLoaders, not RenderTags.

 

Long answer:

In “main.config” you will notice this described as a “DirectSpot”.

 

What happens is that the contents of the spot is sent to the ObjectLoadManager (after being trimmed for spaces).  The ObjectLoadManager then splits on “:” and uses the left side as the “Loader” object and the right side as the “Method/Property”.

 

We have a custom Loader we call “Utility” with methods like “UrlEncode”.

In “shorthand” notation these can be used like this:

<%!! Utility:UrlEncode(String:<%inf_banana%>) %!!>

 

You can’t access custom RenderTags this way.  Actually you can’t access any RenderTags this way.

Have you ever seen:

 

<%!! output !!%>

or

<%!! foreach !!%>

 

1 interesting anomaly is <%!! navigation !!%> as this is both a RenderTag and an ObjectLoader.

 

Regards,

Richard Hauer

Solution Architect

p +61 2 9321 1555 | d +61 2 9321 1556 | m +61 414 189 170

 

From: reddot-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:reddot-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Philipp Mikael
Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2012 1:35 AM
To: reddot-c...@googlegroups.com
Cc: richar...@5limes.com.au
Subject: Re: Custom render tags and render spots

 

Hi, 

 

I'm wondering if it is possible to use the short spot with custom render tags. <reddot:cms><helloworld /></reddot:cms> works fine but <%!! helloworld !!%> doesn't output anything.

 

Regards

Philipp

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[Philipp Mikael]

Hello Richard,

thank you very much for your detailed explanation. Especially the shorthand notation syntax now makes sense to me.

Regards

Philipp