I'm writing a custom Orchard module with a custom Theme. I would like to pass data from the View back to the Layout to change the layout based on data determined in the View.
In my example, I have a left-nav in my theme - certain views should be able to instruct the layout not to render this left-nav.
In standard mvc 3 I would just pass the value up through the ViewBag, but this doesn't seem to be working within Orchard - I'm guessing that the layout code is executed before the View is rendered?
I've looked into using a Shape to move this data around but looks like it might be a little heavyweight for what i'm trying to achieve.
What's the best practice for passing data around like this as an alternative to ViewBag?
Update: After playing around with it a bit more i've just noticed that TempData is being picked up in the Layout - can anyone explain why TempData is transmitted, but ViewData isn't? And is it safe to use from an Orchard POV?
It's easier than that... All templates have access to the Layout shape, which is a dynamic object. This means that you can modify it on the fly, add it properties, etc.
In your specific case, suppressing a zone, you may even be able to just set that to null: zones are just shapes, and in the case of top-level zones they are expandos on Layout. So if you have a zone named Foo, setting Layout.Foo to null should do the trick. As a matter of facts, I'm doing exactly that in one of my themes, to suppress the side bars from my error pages without having to create a specific widget layer:
Layout.AsideFirst = null;
Layout.AsideSecond = null;
Related
I'd like to use Nightwatch's Page Objects system for UI components used across our app. Because nightwatch has their own way of reading/initializing them, I don't see a way of properly extending/re-using them.
For example I want an DateInputPageObject for "date fields". It would identify the label, input, date picker, etc.
I'd use it on any page with a date input field.
I would also like to extend page objects. For example, class FooModal extends Modal. The ModalPageObject would define selectors for elements all modals have - the overlay, container, close button, etc.
I can't find any way to do this in nightwatch, is it possible at all?
The problem is not with nightwatch per se as it's just following the basic structure of page object model BUT that is a very good question and it brings out one of the drawbacks of page object model.
Page object model has been around for some time and the problem with that is that it doesn't serve the needs of modern web applications that use component libraries & living style-guides and re-using components.
Personally I found it easier to use a global json file with all the components structured based on their type. e.g. labels, fields, buttons, etc.
I am using EditorTemplates to style all my input fields. Works like a charm, however now I want two themes of EditorTemplates, one for normal forms, and then one for my wizard forms.
I am already using an overloaded Html.BeginWizardForm() around those Html.EditorFor - but how do I make the MVC logic react on being inside Html.BeginWizardForm() ?
EditorTemplates are designed to be somewhat global. You can override them, though, just like any other view, because they are just views. For example, assuming you have something like Views\Shared\EditorTemplates\String.cshtml, you can then create a another view at Views\Foo\EditorTemplates\String.cshtml, and for any action called from FooController, the latter editor template will be used instead of the one from Shared. You might be able to make this work in your scenario if the wizard form is used in a specific controller or area context.
Short of that, though, there's no way to have this occur automatically. Some manual options still exist, though.
You can decorate the properties of the view model used within the context of the wizard with UIHint attributes. For example, assuming the same shared editor template above, you could do something like:
[UIHint("WizardString")]
public string Foo { get; set; }
That would cause it to look for Views\Shared\EditorTemplates\WizardString.cshtml instead.
You can pass the editor template to use in the call to EditorFor:
#Html.EditorFor(m => m.Foo, "WizardString")
All that said, the biggest problem here is that you seem to be violating a pretty core principal of good web design. HTML is about structure, not presentation. CSS is for presentation. As a result, if you want something to look different in a certain context, the correct approach is to apply different CSS. If things are designed well, your HTML shouldn't really have to change.
It seems is as stated by Chris Pratt not possible to have multiple EditorTemplates.
I however found a workaround by extending the MvcForm and created a WizardForm which adds a value to the ViewContext (in my case "wizardContext" => true) and on disposing setting wizardContext => false.
This allows me in the EditorTemplates to add a check for if I am inside or outside the wizardContext, which will propagate through the nested EditorFor, and in this way allow me to have different themes, without having to be specific in EditorFor.
I've created an alternative layout for one of my articles which can be applied successfully, but as has been highlighted in various forums: if you view the article using the Single Article menu type the alternative layout doesn't get applied because of an XML override.
I have a Joomla site that is setup for Sales and Support where the article info such as date, hits etc is useful but on the marketing side none of that is needed, hence an alternative layout would work well.
I want to know how to enable my alternative layout using the Single Article menu type - I've already got the layout how I want it (testing it by having it overwrite default.php) but want to set it up as marketing.php instead and only have it applied to what is needed.
You're probably not going to like this answer because you have already written you're alternate view. If you were rewriting it to begin with, why would you not write in a way that the side bar parameters (date, hits, ect) are within a container that is only loaded conditionally. This way you would only have one view to worry about and a lot less headaches.
I have an application where I need to display metrics. The application needs to display a separate vertical section for each metric. When I started this, there were only 5 metrics so I naively created a template with 5 regions, one for each metric I needed to display. Now, new metrics need to be added and I want to avoid adding "hardcoded" region divs in the template. I want to refactor this and create the required regions dynamically at startup time based on some configuration data.
So I have been looking at the latest Marionette release and in question "Dynamically add regions to Marionette layout", Derick Bailey mentions that Marionette v1.0 supports dynamic regions in Layouts through addRegion(), as in:
var layout = new MyLayout();
layout.render()
layout.addRegion("someRegion", "#some-element");
layout.someRegion.show(new MyView());
I have tried that in my code (using Marionette 1.0.2) and I am not getting it to work. I don't have a div with id="some-element" in my template and I suspect this could be the reason. I was hoping that Marionette would create that div itself.
Perhaps my expectation of what dynamically adding a region means is wrong. So my first question is: when adding regions dynamically to a layout, must the element id passed in the addRegion() function already exist in the layout?
If so, then I am back to the problem of having to "burn" in the template those divs for the regions to attach themselves too. My follow-up question is then: What is the best way of doing this in a data-driven fashion? Is it a matter of writing my own render() function so that the right set of divs get created? Or perhaps providing my Layout with a model object that will contain data which the template can then iterate through to create the necessary divs? How do we add regions dynamically to a Layout object if we don't know in advance how many regions we will actually need?
Aa #aaronfay specified, we need to use jQuery to create the element on the page. Here is some sample code:
var layout = new MyLayout();
layout.render()
var regionName = "dynamicRegion";
layout.$el.append('<div id="'+regionName+'"></div>');
layout.addRegion("someRegion", "#"+regionName);
layout.someRegion.show(new MyView());
I believe you would need to use jQuery (or similar) to create the element on the page. A Region expects the element to exist.
Otherwise, I believe your answer is here.
I'm trying to render a view, defined in a module, in the main site homepage (~/) as it's main content. If the user is not authenticated, i need to show a login/register view instead.
The logged-in view lives in one module (Product Module) and the login/register view lives in another (Account Module). The logged-in view requires a service call to fetch data based on the user's products. I'm currently using standard mvc to render these views and fetch the data they require in their controllers.
Can this be accomplished by treating these views as shape templates? If so, are there any examples of pulling in views to the homepage like this? Or is there a better way of achieving this?
I have tried implmenting IHomePageProvider to return my own homepage ViewResult within the Product module, but without any success.
Cheers.
First, you might want to look into widgets and layers. You could define a layer for authenticaed users, and one for anonymous users, and attach widgets to those layers to achieve what you want. That might be the best way for you to accomplish this. Look in the Orchard docs for examples on how to do this.
I have done a similar thing before using custom controller and a lot of custom logic. Because of my specific requirements widgets and layers would not work for this. All the content on the page needed to change depending on some inputs, and widgets and layers were not going to be well suited for this. What I did was create a custom controller, and a corresponding Route with a high priority (so the Route takes precedence over any others that want to be the home page). I didn't mess with IHomePageProvider at all.
In the controller action I pulled the data necessary, and created the shapes I wanted, and then returned a result like this: return new ShapeResult(this, homePageShape);
homePageShape is constructed like this, right before the return statement:
// Create personalized home page shape:
var homeShape = _orchardServices.New.CustomHome(
SomeShape1: someShape1
, SomeShape2: someShape2
, SomeModel1: someModel1
...
);
This creates a shape called CustomHome, and orchard will automatically look for a template called CustomHome.cshtml in the views folder of your module.
I created several shapes (all the "someShapeX" vars you see above). Mostly they are created from content parts via the BuildDisplay() method. The content parts are queried using IContentManager, and the shapes are created like this (this example is for a slide show shape):
dynamic sliderShape = _contentManager.BuildDisplay(sliderPart, "Detail");
You can put logic in the controller to build the shapes you want depending on whether or not the user is logged in. In CustomHome.cshtml you would render a shape like this:
#Display(Model.SomeShape1)