Multiple Image Support in PropertyList

While working on a past project with heavy use of IList<T> properties I ran into several usability situations. One of those situations involved read-only values that were being imported from an external system. They needed to appear in the CollectionEditor, but did not need to be editable (read about that here). Another scenario I encountered involved images in the CollectionEditor. It started off with a simple implementation of the solution provided by Grzegorz Wiecheć, but evolved into something more.

One of the challenges we faced was the customer's need for multiple images in the list, and those images not always sharing the same property name. As with the issue around default values, some of the data for this was being synchronized with an external system, so we needed to be flexible with the property names and the number of image properties that might be present in the list.

Episerver Widgets Resources for Text, Labels, and Styles

I have been doing more component and widget building in Episerver lately, and I have been digging around trying to find references to labels and text being used in widgets or referenced in other areas. I had to dig around to find some things, and instead of continually digging next time I need them, I decided to add them here. I also came across the Episerver style guide in my search for information, so I added that here as well. If I come across other references I need to use in the future, I'll update this with them also.

So, to clarify, this is really here to make it easier for me to find things I need in the future, but if you need this information and find it helpful, it's here for you too.

Replacing HTML strings with Dojo TemplatedMixin

I've been playing around with Dojo a bit recently, modifying some Episerver widgets, and extending functionality, and I ran into a scenario I wasn't really satisfied with. In one situation I encountered, I needed to supply an HTML string for a widget to utilize when rendering data for an object, but the HTML markup had some conditions to it based on the object I was on at the time. Another situation involved looping through items and adding them to a list for display in a widget, again needing to include data from the object in the markup.

I searched online for how to parse HTML strings to include object data or conditions in it, but I didn't find the kind of answer I wanted. Many of the examples online show HTML strings in the Dojo script using concatenation for adding the variables, and others involved multiple lines of node creation and dom manipulation using "dojo.place" and "domConstruct". If you want easily adjustable markup using a template approach, avoiding modifying your dojo JS, these techniques are not the most user friendly. However, I did discover a solution.

DefaultValue in PropertyList

When Episerver brought out PropertyList support in 9.0 and showed the world how to utilize it (read the article here) it rocked the Episerver developer community and changed the way we utilize the CMS to this day! Okay, that's obviously an exaggeration, but it did introduce a different property type to the community, and brought about a different way of supporting lists or collections of data, that didn't require a bunch of blocks added to a ContentArea.

As interesting as it is, however, there are some shortcomings to this functionality. After all, it's mentioned in the linked article that it is a "pre-release API that is UNSTABLE." It's expected to have some quirks and shortcomings. Thankfully, as has already been demonstrated by Grzegorz, in his PropertyList with Images article, the PropertyList, or more importantly the CollectionEditor, can be extended to modify the functionality to fit different needs.

In this article I am taking a similar approach to Grzegorz to extend the functionality, but instead of supporting images in the list, I needed to support a default value specified through code.

Rendering Options for DateTime (and other) Properties in Episerver

The question has been brought up to me more than a couple times in the past few weeks about how to properly format a DateTime property in a View and still allow In-Page Editing to work. Since I have answered it with mostly the same information each time it has come up, I figured it was time to put something out in cyberspace that I can point people to, or even help them find when the situation arises.

I am a huge fan of In-Page Editing in Episerver, and part of my goal when teaching people techniques working with Epi is to keep that In-Page Editing experience in place for users and editors so they can get the most enjoyable experience out of their site and CMS.

The nice thing about the approaches in this article is that while the article is centered around the DateTime property, most of these techniques apply to any property where you need to display something different than the actual property value.

Ultimately, then, this article is about the various techniques to render a property in a view while keeping the In-Page Editor working. I'm just using a DateTime property as an example.

Configure Roles and Permissions for Episerver ServiceAPI

Episerver has a nice ServiceAPI package that grants you access to some CMS and Commerce functionality using a RESTful approach. It installs via Nuget, and is a pretty painless process... when you have all the information in front of you. After a few hang ups and "gotcha" moments, I eventually got it configured. However, the documentation from Episerver could benefit from a few fillings, and I finally found someone who took care of that for me.

A CSS-only Approach to Tooltip Icons for Help Text in Episerver

I was working through cleaning up the interface for my latest Episerver project the other day - clearly defining names, adding icon attributes to pages, adding helpful descriptions - and I saw a Tweet buzz across the wire for an article on adding icons to properties with Help Text (Description). The article is actually really good, and it got picked up by a couple colleagues of mine who implemented the solution in it. It's by Ted Nyberg and you should check it out here: https://tedgustaf.com/blog/2016/icon-for-property-help-texts-in-episerver/.

It sparked a memory for me, though, of another article I had bookmarked a short while back by Alf Nilsson, on how to expose the Help Text (Description) alongside the property name in the UI, eliminating the need to hover. Again, it's another good article and you should read it as well: https://talk.alfnilsson.se/2014/12/18/display-help-text-in-on-page-editing/.

Both of these articles touch on a pain point of mine, and various other Episerver developers, around how the Help Text (Description) is displayed for properties in the UI, and it got me thinking of another approach to address this issue, essentially combining these two ideas.