Life of a geek and a part-time poet

Contents

• Introduction
• .NET XSLT Extension Objects
• Creating an Extension Object
• Using Extension Objects – The Old Way
• Using Extension Objects – The New Way
• XSLT Page Template
• Conclusion
• Source Code
• Resources

Introduction

In the previous article I’ve discussed the fundamentals of setting up the XSLT Mediator, configuring it and then showed how to create a simple compound component template which is making use of an XSLT TBB.

In this article I would like to concentrate mainly on extension objects; a little bit on what they are and how to make use of these in conjunction with the mediator.

.NET XSLT Extension Objects

The .NET Framework allows us to extend the style sheets we build by creating Extension Objects, these can be simple classes that contain helper or utility methods.

Some functionality is either extremely difficult or impossible to implement in pure XSLT code, for example we may want to retrieve a list of items from Tridion, doing this in just XSLT will be complicated and unmanageable to say the least.
The extension feature allows writing the logic for this kind of functionality in .NET managed code, we may even already written this code for a different part of our implementation and we simply want to reuse it.

If this concept is still unclear I am sure it will become more so further in the article, I will also add some links to other resources on the web that cover this area more thoroughly.

Creating an Extension Object

We’ll begin by creating a simple class with some useful methods that we can reuse in multiple templates:


using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using Tridion.ContentManager;
using Tridion.ContentManager.ContentManagement;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Publishing.Rendering;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Templating;

namespace Tridion.Extensions.Templating.XsltHelpers
{
public class SimpleXsltHelper
{
private TemplatingLogger m_Logger = null;
private Engine m_Engine = null;

public SimpleXsltHelper(Engine engine)
{
m_Engine = engine;
m_Logger = TemplatingLogger.GetLogger(this.GetType());
}

///
/// Returns the result of rendering the provided component and compomnent tempalte in a xml document
///component = the TCM URI of the component
///componentTemplate = the TCM URI of the component template
public XmlDocument RenderComponentPresentation(string component, string componentTemplate)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

using (XmlWriter xWriter = XmlWriter.Create(sb))
{
xWriter.WriteStartElement("result");

TcmUri compURI = new TcmUri(component);
TcmUri ctURI = new TcmUri(componentTemplate);
xWriter.WriteRaw(m_Engine.RenderComponentPresentation(compURI, ctURI));
xWriter.WriteEndElement(); //result
}

XmlDocument resultDoc = new XmlDocument();
resultDoc.LoadXml(sb.ToString());
return resultDoc;
}

/// Used to publish a binary to the presentation server
/// compURI = the TCM URI of the multimedia component to publish
/// Returns the publish path of the binary
public string PublishBinary(string compURI)
{
Component comp = m_Engine.GetObject(compURI) as Component;

string publishPath = comp.Id;

if (comp.BinaryContent != null)
{
Binary pubBinary = m_Engine.PublishingContext.RenderedItem.AddBinary(comp);

m_Logger.Debug("PublishBinary: published Binary: " + comp.Id + " to url: " + pubBinary.Url);

publishPath = pubBinary.Url;
}
else
m_Logger.Warning("PublishBinary: " + comp.Id + " is not a multimedia coomponent");

return publishPath;
}
}
}

Here’s an explanation of the code:

The constructor of the class accepts a single parameter, an instance of the Engine (Tridion.ContentManager.Templating.Engine) class.

RenderComponentPresentation(string component, string componentTemplate) – this method accepts the TCM URI of a component and the TCM URI of a component template, renders the two and returns the resulting content in an xml document.

PublishBinary(string compURI) – this method accepts the TCM URI of a multimedia component and using the AddBinary method makes sure the binary is published to presentation server. The method returns the relative path of the published binary file.

The reason for creating this class is to be able to call the methods defined in it from an XSLT TBB, the next couple of sections demonstrate ways of accomplishing this.

Using Extension Objects – The Old Way

When I released the XSLT Mediator there was only one way for adding extension objects. To add an object to the transformation we had to create the class in the Mediator’s assembly project and inject the line of code for adding the object into the mediator’s class.

I’ve later improved this a bit by making the method in charge of adding extension objects Virtual so a developer can create their own mediator inheriting from the Tridion.Extensions.Mediators.XsltMediator and overriding that method.

So a project with a custom extension object will look something like this:

In the image above you can see the helper class (which we’ll use as an extension object) and the custom mediator inheriting from the XsltMediator.

The code for our custom mediator will look like this:

using System.Xml.Xsl;
using Tridion.Extensions.Mediators;

namespace XSLTMediator.Tutorials
{
public class MyCustomMediator : XsltMediator
{
protected override void AddExtensionObjects(XsltArgumentList arglist)
{
SimpleXsltHelper helper = new SimpleXsltHelper(this.Engine);

arglist.AddExtensionObject("http://www.tridion.com/customhelper", helper);

base.AddExtensionObjects(arglist);
}

}
}

The code is very straightforward, We override the virtual method AddExtensionObjects which accepts a single parameter of type System.Xml.Xsl.XsltArgumentList.
To the arglist parameter we can add our extension objects using its method AddExtensionObject(string, object).
The method expects two parameters, the first, a String, which should contain a unique namespace within the transformation. This can be just about any string of characters you decide to use as long as its unique.

The second parameter is the actual extension object which is an instance of the SimpleXsltHelper class we created earlier.

The last line of code to mention is

base.AddExtensionObjects(arglist);

This makes sure that the helper extension object which is bundled with the mediator is also available in the transformation. If you don’t plan on using this helper object you can simply omit that line of code from your implementation.

To be able to start using our new extension object there is one last step which is needed. In the previous article I’ve showed how to configure the basic mediator in the Tridion configuration file.

First build the project and overwrite the existing Mediator DLL file with the new build.

Since now we have a new custom implementation of the mediator we need to configure this new class name instead.

So in the Tridion.ContentManager.config file change the type attribute of the XSLT mediator from: Tridion.Extensions.Mediators.XsltMediator to XSLTMediator.Tutorials.MyCustomMediator
(the namespace and class name will obviously be different in real implementations).

Make sure you restart all the necessary services as explained in the first article.

Now we can go ahead and use the new methods we created in our XSLT templates.
We will go on and extend the XSLT template used in the previous article:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:simple="uuid:3CC625ED-34E6-4B51-BDD8-72BBD0D71469"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:tcm="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.0"
xmlns:customHelper="http://www.tridion.com/customhelper"
xmlns:image="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.0/DefaultMultimediaSchema" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl simple customHelper">


<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">

<xsl:element name="p">

<xsl:apply-templates select="tcm:Component/tcm:Data/tcm:Content/simple:Content"/>

</xsl:element>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="simple:Content">

<xsl:element name="h3">

<xsl:value-of select="simple:title"/>

</xsl:element>

<xsl:element name="div">

<xsl:copy-of select="simple:body"/>

</xsl:element>

<xsl:element name="div">

Publish Date: <xsl:value-of select="simple:pubDate"/>

</xsl:element>

<xsl:element name="img">

<xsl:attribute name="alt">

<xsl:value-of select="document(simple:image/@xlink:href)/tcm:Component/tcm:Data/tcm:Metadata/image:Metadata/image:altText"/>

</xsl:attribute>

<xsl:attribute name="src">

<xsl:value-of select="customHelper:PublishBinary(simple:image/@xlink:href)"/>

</xsl:attribute>

</xsl:element>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

First thing to notice is the declaration of the helper class namespace at the top:
xmlns:customHelper=”http://www.tridion.com/customhelper”. The important part is the namespace itself, it should be exactly the same as the one used in the Mediator’s code.
The prefix we assign this namespace can be anything we decide on as long as its unique within the context of our template.

The second part to notice is the call to our PublishBinary() method, using the prefix defined previously we can call any public method defined in the extension object’s class (As long as we use valid parameter data types). Since this method returns the publish path of the binary being published in our example we can use the returned value to set the ‘src’ attribute of the ‘img’ HTML element.

Notice that this time when we execute the compound template there is no need for the default finish actions, the image is published by the XSLT Template and the extension object.

Hopefully this simple example shows how extension objects can be used to augment XSLT templates in such a way that provides a very robust and manageable model.

Using Extension Objects – The New Way

As can be seen from previous sections its quite simple to create XSLT templates for compound templates and even add custom logic in the form of extension objects.

One thing bothered me about this process and that is that this type of templating model basically forces managing code in two locations, two projects: one is the templates projects which is uploaded into Tridion using the assembly upload tool and the second is the Mediator project which during a project and/or implementation is updated with extension objects and helper methods.
These two projects have to be maintained separately even though they both contain functionality which is ultimately used for one purpose – templates.

Because of this issue I came up with a new and in my view better way of creating and maintaining extension objects. This way allows you to create the class(es) in the same project you develop your templates.
The Mediator then loads the extension object(s) from Tridion in a similar manner to how Tridion loads .NET templates.

Using this new way you no longer need to keep updating the Mediator project, you can simply use the provided mediator as is.

To create extension objects in the Templates project you need a few things, if you are using the base project (available on world) you’ll have an easier time because everything you need is provided there.

First, any class which is meant to be used as an EO (Extension Object) should implement an interface, this is an interface you can create yourself or you can use the one in the base project, IXsltHelper. it doesn’t really matter which interface it is actually as we will see in a minute.

The second thing needed is to decorate any class used as an EO with an attribute class, TridionXSLTHelperNSAttribute. This attribute is used to define the namespace the EO will be assigned with when inserted into the argument list.
If you’re not using the base project or using an old version of it, simply download the new project from SDLTridionWorld and copy the TridionXSLTHelperNSAttribute class file to your project.

Your project should have similar elements to this example:

Since we already created a sample extension object we can reuse it by adding it to our templates project.
We will need to modify it a bit to conform to our new style:

using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using Tridion.ContentManager;
using Tridion.ContentManager.ContentManagement;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Publishing.Rendering;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Templating;
using Tridion.Extensions.ContentManager.Templating;

namespace Tridion.Extensions.Mediators
{
[TridionXSLTHelperNS("http://www.tridion.com/customhelper")]
public class SimpleXsltHelper : IXSLTHelper
{
private TemplatingLogger m_Logger = null;
private Engine m_Engine = null;
.
.
.

Notice that now the SimpleXsltHelper is implementing our IXSLTHelper interface and has the TridionXSLTHelperNS attribute. The value we pass the attribute is the same namespace we used earlier so that means there is no need to change the XSLT at all.

The mediator will take care of the rest, but to make sure it does we need to add a few configuration parameters to the Tridion.ContentManagaer.config file in this fashion:


<mediator matchMIMEType="text/xml" type="Tridion.Extensions.Mediators.XsltMediator" assemblyPath="C:\Program Files\Tridion\bin\Tridion.Extensions.Mediators.dll">
<parameters>
<parameter name="loadFromTridion" value="true"/>
<parameter name="interfaceName" value="IXSLTHelper"/>
<parameter name="templateID" value="tcm:42-15958-2048"/>
</parameters>
</mediator>

Let’s go over the parameters:

loadFromTridion: True or False telling the mediator whether to look for extension objects in Tridion.

interfaceName: The Mediator loads the assembly for Tridion and will look for classes that implement an interface with this name.

templateID: The TCM URI of the template building block containing the templates assembly.

As always make sure to restart all the necessary services after making the configuration changes.

From now on you can create and modify your extension objects as if they were any other .NET template you were working on. Updating the code in Tridion requires the same process as do normal templates and there are no extra steps needed.
It also means you have only one project containing all your templating functionality code which I think is a massive improvement.

Running our compound CT again gives us the exact same result as before:

XSLT Page Template

Up until now we have been working on a compound component template that was using a XSLT TBB but it wasn’t doing much more than what could be accomplished with normal XSLT CT.

Here is an example of a simple XSLT page template:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:tcm="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.0"
xmlns:customHelper="http://www.tridion.com/customhelper"
exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl customHelper">

<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<title>
<xsl:value-of select="tcm:Page/tcm:Data/tcm:Title/text()"/>
</title>
</head>

<body style="background-color:yellow;">
<xsl:for-each select="tcm:Page/tcm:Data/tcm:ComponentPresentations/tcm:ComponentPresentation">

<p>

<xsl:variable name="cp" select="customHelper:RenderComponentPresentation(tcm:Component/@xlink:href, tcm:ComponentTemplate/@xlink:href)"/>

<xsl:copy-of select="$cp/result/node()"/>
</p>

</xsl:for-each>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

As with the Component Template created in the first part of this tutorial, you will need to create a XSLT TBB and paste the above code into the source pane, then create a new compound page template in the Template Builder and add the new XSLT TBB to the list of selected templates.
Save and close the new PT and create a new page based on this page template.

Now we can preview our XSLT page template successfully:

Very easily we created a new page template in XSLT, to render the component presentations on the page we use a method we added to the extension object which returns the resulting content and layout in an XML document that is stored in a variable from which we can copy it onto the page.

Conclusion

In this article I focused mainly on creating extension objects and using them from XSLT templates.
I showed two ways of including extension objects in the transformation of templates, both are valid but the second is much more convenient in terms of deploying and managing the functionality of extension objects..

I’ve even added a simple example of a XSLT page template which is where the benefit of using the XSLT Mediator is really obvious since Tridion doesn’t support this type of template natively.

The XSLT Mediator comes with an extension object which is added to the transformation by default. The namespace for this object is: “http://www.sdltridion.com/ps/XSLTHelper”

This default object comes with some useful methods:

getFormatedDate – Generic XSLT helper function to format date strings using standard format strings.

getListItems – Generic XSLT helper function to retrieve items from within an OrganizationalItem

GetMultimediaInfo – Returns xml with information about the MM component such as the mime type or extension

Source Code

Can be downloaded here.

Resources

• Extension Objects: How To
• Extending XSLT in C#
• Using .NET XSLT Extension Objects