Skip to main content

A Simple Site Map

Similar to creating a menu – creating a site map is even easier, there are modules that can do this but with a little preparation it can be very easy to create yourself.

To start we are assuming every template used for the pages includes some ‘base template’ for common aspects for all pages.

To do this, create (or select if already created) the Base Template with the information you want to have and to that base template, add:

InSiteMap: Checkbox

Then create or modify the Page templates with the other information you want. From those templates, click to the Content tab, and select the Base template to be included:

sitecoretemplatecontent

In the Standard values for the base template, you may want to have InSiteMap checked so that it will be on by default for all the pages.

For the sitemap itself, we’re going to create a rendering and then we can place it wherever we would like.

The rendering creates a basic nested list of all the items that have InSiteMap checked.

<xsl:template match="*" mode="main">
<
ul>
<
li>
<
sc:link select="$home">
Home
</sc:link>
<
xsl:variable name="hasSubItems" select="$home/item[sc:fld('InSiteMap',.) = '1']"/>
<
xsl:if test="$hasSubItems">
<
xsl:call-template name="subitems">
<
xsl:with-param name="itemparent" select="$home" />
</
xsl:call-template>
</
xsl:if>

</
li>
</
ul>
</
xsl:template>

<
xsl:template name="subitems">
<
xsl:param name="itemparent" />
<
ul>
<
xsl:for-each select="$itemparent/item[sc:fld('InSiteMap',.) = '1']">
<
li>
<
sc:link>
<
sc:text field="Page Title" />
</
sc:link>
</
li>
<
xsl:variable name="hasSubItems" select="item[sc:fld('InSiteMap',.) = '1']"/>
<
xsl:if test="$hasSubItems">
<
xsl:call-template name="subitems">
<
xsl:with-param name="itemparent" select="." />
</
xsl:call-template>
</
xsl:if>
</
xsl:for-each>
</
ul>
</
xsl:template>

Above we list the link to the home item in an unordered list:

 <sc:link select="$home">
Home
</sc:link>

<sc:link> with no parameters will link to the current item that is being processed by the xslt file – if not specified by any settings this will default to the page that the rendering is on. Since the current page is Not actually the home page, we are choosing to use $home as the source for the link (if the source for the link was actually in a field in the item you’d used field=”field name”).


Moving on, if there are any items under home that are listed as ‘InSiteMap’ it will call our template named subitems and pass the value for the parent of the item.

        <xsl:variable  name="hasSubItems" select="$home/item[sc:fld('InSiteMap',.) = '1']"/>
<
xsl:if test="$hasSubItems">
<
xsl:call-template name="subitems">
<
xsl:with-param name="itemparent" select="$home" />
</
xsl:call-template>
</
xsl:if>

Here the variable hasSubItems is created and the value for this is determined by any items within $home containing the field InSiteMap being checked (=’1’ – unchecked would be =’0’).


If we have any items that will be in the sitemap under $home, we call our template.


Within the template, we create a new unordered list, and then go through each item which will be listed in the site map and display a link using the ‘Page Title’ (this is any field that we want to have displayed to represent the item). We then check to see if we have any subitems to display and run the template again! With a bit of recursion, we head through all the items on the site as long as they and their parents have InSiteMap checked.


All that is left is adding the rendering to a page to be seen, and it will display a nested list of the pages on the site to be styled as needed!


Alternately, instead of checking for a selected checkbox, it could run through all pages with a specific template(or selection of templates) if you did not need to worry about excluding any specific pages that are using it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using the Source Property

For each of the properties in your template you can set a source for it, this isn’t always used but can improve user experience drastically when done throughout a site. The source field comes in to play whenever you are using any of the following fields: Droplink, Droplist, Droptree, File, Grouped Droplink, Grouped Droplist, Image, Multilist, Treelist, Rich text field and a number of others. There are various ways of setting these up to achieve different results – but in general you are using the source to limit the set of items that can be used, and this requirement can also help you determine what kind of field to use. For example, if you have a Set of items all split down into sub folders and want the content editor to make use of the tree, you could use a TreeList or Drop Tree, but if you just want a set of items without the opportunity to see where those items are – multilists or droplinks are the way to go. For Images you’re generally just specifying where to look for and put th

Determining Page Editor Status with Javascript

     Often you’ll need to know if you are inside or outside the Experience/Page Editor in order perform an action. If you are on the server-side in code-behind you can check the Sitecore.Context.PageMode to determine which mode you are in. But what about at runtime? Javascript per usual can save the day! Though you can find PageModes through the Sitecore object if it is available to the browser, it may not be there. Depending on how things have been set up with your solution, the Sitecore object may not return a null as would be expected when checking to see if you can access it. Instead Sitecore may be undefined.  Contrary to some examples on the web with only null checks, this quick little change in your script can correctly let you know if you are in the page editor: Just take a look to see if isPageEditor is true or false and you’re set!

Links as Items Redux!

Previously I had posted on how to set up items in your content tree to act as external links to other pages (for use with Navigation mainly – for example if you have a blog elsewhere but still want it listed in the main navigation). However, Ivan Buzyka pointed out some issues with the simple implementation so I added creating a better redirect to my ‘to do’ list for the blog. The time has come! Let’s pretend we are modifying an existing site, we don’t want to change the navigation so that won’t be covered here – we just want to update our layout to work a little more universally. Our new items need to be able to link to an internal, external or Media item reliably for display in our navigation. Our template will consist of similar things to last time: Link: General Link Nav Title: Text -> standard values: $name In Navigation: Checkbox ->standard values: checked Create the template, add in standard values for it with the above settings and now we can create our Layout which shou