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Posts tagged in Sitecore

Automated Testing and Sitecore - Part 3

In my first post of this series I talked about the high level concepts of how I do my automated testing in Sitecore. All of the techniques I wrote about require a known content structure to test against as the content tree makes up one part of the input into our test. This post is going to focus on programatically setting up our test environment so we can perform our tests in a repeatable...

Into Shared Source

It is with great pride I today became part of the elite known as the Sitecore shared source contributors. How does one become part of such a privileged group? You just have to contribute something to the Sitecore shared source repository :) . I have placed one of my Sitecore tweaks, the Editor Line Numbers which I released on this blog a few months ago, into Sitecore shared source. I did this...

Automated Testing and Sitecore - Part 2

In the first post of this series I mention I make use of a custom NUnit test runner which runs in the Sitecore context. In this post I'll take you through creating such a test runner. The test runner is just a web form deployed to the webroot of your Sitecore site. Because it runs inside your Sitecore application it runs within a Sitecore context. The test runner allows running a selection of test...

Show some standard fields always

I had a question posed to me today from Krystle Magadia from New Zealand about how to show some of the standard fields without having to switch on standard fields under the view tab in the content editor. The scenario given was that the archive and reminder fields (under the tasks field section) should always be displayed. Normally we interact with these fields using the commands and wizards on...

Automated Testing and Sitecore - Part 1

Well, my last post seems to have generated some interest. Automated testing with Sitecore is a hot topic. It is much more difficult and complex than those 2 second demos you see for general unit testing in your code. The purpose of this post is to describe how I currently perform my automated testing against Sitecore. I say currently because I am constantly updating how I do this as I discover...

Source Control for my content

Sitecore already has version control built in for content. This is great when you're using the CMS to deliver content, but during implementation the benefit isn't as great. What would be really good, is if I could somehow utilise my existing source control software which I use for my developer files for the content as well. Ah, Sitecore 6.0. With it's wealth of new features and usability...

Creating and running custom pipelines in Sitecore

A lot of what happens when you request a page in Sitecore is handled by pipelines. Actually, Sitecore makes extensive use of pipelines all the way from handling page requests, to uploading files and saving items through the UI. So what is a pipeline? A pipeline is a discrete set of steps, executed in order. It is an architectural design you can employ for certain cases in your applications. If I...

Windows Command Bindings for Revolver

So, you may have guessed that I lean towards the *nix way of doing things with the command bindings in Revolver. I prefer ls over dir. But if you're writing code for Sitecore you're definatly working in a Windows environment and probably not so comfortable with the *nix commands. I've written Revolver to be extensible and also to allow the rebinding of the core commands to different monikers. This...

Sitecore as a Content Delivery Platform

Sitecore does a really good job of separating content from presentation. And a side effect of this is that we can reuse either part in other ways. We can reuse the content section of Sitecore to author and deliver content to different applications and we can reuse the presentation to generate markup for data which lives outside of Sitecore. This post is going to focus on the content side of...

Moving fields with Revolver

The Sitecore packager is a brilliant little application for moving things from one Sitecore server to another. One limitation I've run into with it is that it only operates on the item level. If I only need or want to update certain fields of an item, then I have to do it manually. Or so I did before Revolver anyway. Let me give you a solid example of what I'm talking about. When performing...

Line numbers in developer centre

Recently I was in a Sitecore training session where a student was commenting on the line numbers given in XSLT errors from .NET. As with most XSLT parsers, when the .NET XSLT parser encounters a syntax error in the XSLT file it gives a friendly error message including the line number the error occurred on. This particular student mentioned it would be good if the XSLT editor in Sitecore contained...

Quick launch toolbar for Sitecore

One feature I find I can't live without in a windowed environment is the quicklaunch toolbar. This is the row of icons which sits next to the menu button. I just find it so handy to launch any commonly used application from there rather than clicking through the menu to look for it. And yes, we can also make use of desktop shortcuts, but to do that you have to minimise all your windows before...

Emitting different file types from Sitecore

One of the really nice things about Sitecore is the fact the developer has total control over the markup a particular page produces. Sitecore itself imposes no limitations or restrictions on how your markup needs to look. In fact, the dev has so much control, you don't event have to emit markup from your pages. You could emit CSS or json as well. Previously I have emitted both CSS and ajax...

Crestone differences update rev 080514

As is the case with beta software, Crestone is changing from release to release. I wrote my first Crestone Differences post based on the original Beta rev 080314. I recently upgrade the Crestone install which I'm testing Revolver against to rev 080514 and found some differences between this build and the previous. These differences also invalidate the code samples in my post Assessing the Everyone...

Revolver is Released!

It's been a long road, but finally, Revolver has been released! And what's more, Sitecore Xpress users can run it for free! Thanks to Lars Nielsen for the suggestion. Head on over to the Revolver Download page to download the...

Archive and Recycle bin in Crestone

One of the big changes in Crestone is the reduced number of databases. We now only have 3 by default instead of 7. The extranet and security databases have been removed due to the use of ASP.NET security, and the recycle bin and archive databases are also AWOL. Sitecore considers both recycle bin and archive to be archives of the source database. This is evident in web.config. If you go and have a...

Introduction to Revolver

I've mentioned Revolver before on this blog. So what is it? For those that haven't ventured down the hyperlink... Revolver is a command prompt for Sitecore targeted at developers and site administrators. I originally wrote Revolver due to 2 reasons: I really liked the idea of "Sitecore Script" which was an idea I was working on to allow me to script out common actions. I was at the...

Assessing the "Everyone" role in Crestone

Update 20080629: This post was written with code against the original Crestone beta release 080314. The API for the latest beta release 080514 has changed and altered the code in this post. Check out my post Crestone differences update rev 080514 for updates to the code samples here. As you may be aware, the security model in Sitecore's Crestone release has completely changed. Sitecore as of...

Crestone Differences

I was privileged enough to be included in the Crestone beta program which Sitecore ran recently. Crestone is the code name of the new Sitecore release. This release is an evolutionary upgrade with a strong focus on usability. This is evident in the new page editor and page designer interfaces. Off the UI, the most immediately evident changes are the number of databases (only master, web and core...

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