Retrieving values of a linked component in Dreamweaver TBB - and making it SiteEditable

Question

I am working on Dreamweaver TBBs in SDL Tridion 2011 SP1.

I am unaware of handling component links in Dreamweaver TBBs.

Consider my Component name is "A" which has link to another component "B".

Component A source looks like this:

<Content xmlns="Some UUID">
    <Name xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="tcm:184-1897" 
          xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:title="B"></Name>
</Content>

Component B source is:

<Content xmlns="Some other UUID">
    <first>first field</first>
    <second>second field</second>
</Content>

I want to write a DWT TBB which can access the fields in the linked component B from Component A.

I want to use RenderComponentField rendition method.

Do I need to add any extentions to it, will I be able apply SiteEdit on it.

Please share your views on it.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Allowing fields of a linked Component to be editable has been introduced in SiteEdit 2009 SP2. The SiteEdit front-end works based on the SiteEdit command language that is embedded into the HTML it gets back from the staging server.

So let's say you have a single Component in there:

<div class="cp">
    <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Presentation: {"ID" : "cp_1", 
         "ComponentID" : "tcm:12-549", "ComponentTemplateID" : "tcm:12-568-32",
         "ComponentVersion" : 5, "IsQueryBased" : false  } -->
    <label>Title: </label>
    <span>
        <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Field: {"ID": "cf_1", 
             "XPath": "tcm:Content/custom:Content/custom:Title", 
             "IsMultiValued":false} -->
        Tips for getting insurance when you have a pre-existing condition
    </span>
</div>

Those Start SiteEdit comments in there are commands that your HTML gives to SiteEdit and you can see how they mark the Component Presentation and the title field.

If you render fields of a linked Component, you need to also have a corresponding Component Presentation command like this:

<div class="cp">
    <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Presentation: {"ID" : "cp_1", 
         "ComponentID": "tcm:12-54", "ComponentTemplateID": "tcm:12-56-32",
         "ComponentVersion" : 5, "IsQueryBased" : false  } -->
    <label>Title: </label>
    <span>
        <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Field: {"ID": "cf_1", 
             "XPath": "tcm:Content/custom:Content/custom:Title", 
             "IsMultiValued":false} -->
        Tips for getting insurance when you have a pre-existing condition
    </span>
    <br />
    <div class="cp">
        <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Presentation: {"ID" : "cp_2", 
            "ComponentID": "tcm:12-85", "ComponentTemplateID": "tcm:12-60-32", 
            "ComponentVersion" : 2, "IsQueryBased" : true  } -->
        <label>Byline: </label>
        <span>
            <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Field: {"ID": "cf_2", 
                 "XPath": "tcm:Metadata/custom:Metadata/custom:ByLine", 
                 "IsMultiValued":false} -->
            "It's a huge problem, because ..." says one expert.
        </span>
        <br />
        <label>Copyright: </label>
        <span>
            <!-- Start SiteEdit Component Field: {"ID": "cf_3", 
                 "XPath": "tcm:Metadata/custom:Metadata/custom:Copyright", 
                 "IsMultiValued":false} -->
            Getty Images
        </span>
    </div>
</div>

The there are now two Start SiteEdit Component Presentation commands, one for the outer Component and one for the linked Component. One important thing to note here is that the IsQueryBased property of the nested Component Presentation must be set to true. This tells the SiteEdit front-end that the Component Presentation is indeed not supposed to be present in the Page XML it retrieves from Tridion.

To the SiteEdit front-end it doesn't matter how the commands are put into the HTML.

Most common is for people to call RenderComponentPresentation and RenderComponentField, which marks the corresponding parts. But unfortunately the RenderComponentField function can only be used to render fields from the so-called "context Component", which it looks up like this:

Item component = _package.GetByType(ContentType.Component);

This means that in a single DWT all calls to RenderComponentField will work on the same context Component. So you can never call RenderComponentField in a single DWT to render fields from two different Components.

You have two options to solve this:

1. Call RenderComponentPresentation for the linked Component
2. Render the Start SiteEdit Component Presentation and Start SiteEdit Component Field commands yourself in the DWT

Option 1 is the cleanest separation you can get: since you are rendering fields from another Component, you are essentially rendering another Component Presentation. If you split out the layout for the linked fields into a separate DWT and build a CT around that, you can render it like this in your main DWT:

@@RenderComponentPresentation(Component.Fields.Name, "tcm:1-2-32")@@

Walter explained this best in his article on Tridion templating:

Since the scope of this Dreamweaver template is limited to displaying the current component fields, an extra step is necessary by using the RenderComponentPresentation function. We need to pass the TCM URI of the multimedia component to this function, together with the TCM URI of another Dreamweaver template.

Although it does lead to more CTs and DWTs, those DWTs will be a lot simpler since you can now use RenderComponentField in them as usual.

Option 2 really just means that you're outputting the HTML comments with the SiteEdit commands in your DWT. Since the command language is documented as part of the API (see link above) there is little chance that it will change in future versions of SiteEdit 2009.

Sorry for the long story, you happened to trigger a tricky use-case here. I hope it makes sense.

Answer 2

If you are using SiteEdit 2009 it is possible, just a bit more difficult than it would be with the main component fields. SiteEdit works by wrapping the content fields with JSON markup. There's no reason why you can't detect if the publication target is staging and write this JSON out yourself.

Alternatively Will Price has developed some Template Building Blocks to help with SiteEdit which are available here.

These are accompanied by a guide here, specifically the section on embedded components will be of use to you.