Sitecore Expert
Tag: Sitecore
From time to time developer faces with the need to perform some action with the item in the scope of administrative user. In such case there are two possibilities:
SecurityDisabler and UserSwitcher.
Both of them allows developer to solve the task. So, let’s what is the difference between them and which of them is most preferable to use.
The log4net version included in Sitecore doesn’t contains the stack trace. That means that you cannot use %stacktrace or %stacktracedetail in the conversionsPattern.
I have found the way of how to do it. As a workaround, you should override the appender!
First create the following class:
public class SitecoreLogFileWithStackTraceAppender : SitecoreLogFileAppender
{
protected override void Append(LoggingEvent loggingEvent)
{
var msg = loggingEvent.MessageObject as string;
if (msg != null)
{
var prop = loggingEvent.GetType().GetField("m_data", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
var mData = (LoggingEventData)prop.GetValue(loggingEvent);
mData.Message = $"{msg}{Environment.NewLine}{Environment.StackTrace}";
prop.SetValue(loggingEvent, mData);
}
base.Append(loggingEvent);
}
}
Second step, register newly created log4net appender:
<appender name="StackFileAppender" type="AndreyVinda.Loggers.SitecoreLogFileWithStackTraceAppender, AndreyVinda.Loggers">
<file value="$(dataFolder)/logs/log.Stacktraces.{date}.txt" />
<appendToFile value="true" />
<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
<conversionPattern value="%5t %d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff} %-5p %c - %m%n%n" />
</layout>
</appender>
For one of my projects I have chosen to log all the errors and all the messages that contains [SD] within the stacktrace. The config file is the following:
<appender name="StackFileAppender" type="AndreyVinda.Loggers.SitecoreLogFileWithStackTraceAppender, AndreyVinda.Loggers">
<file value="$(dataFolder)/logs/log.Stacktraces.{date}.txt" />
<filter type="log4net.Filter.StringMatchFilter">
<stringToMatch value="[SD]"></stringToMatch>
</filter>
<filter type="log4net.Filter.DenyAllFilter" />
<appendToFile value="true" />
<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
<conversionPattern value="%5t %d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff} %-5p %c - %m%n%n" />
</layout>
</appender>
Enjoy!
Sitecore is a web based system and just like to others systems it uses query string parameters to pass viable data. They are used to explicitly configure such important things as display modes, sites, languages etc. Remembering of those tricky things could have a huge speed improvement in cases when dealing with multi-language, multi-device or page editor enabled solutions. Below is the list of the Sitecore query string parameters that I have been using in my day-to-day job.
Continue reading “Sitecore: Force of Query String Parameters”
Out of the box, Sitecore comes with the following expand standard values tokens:
Sometimes the already existing tokens are not enough. There are cases in which the Content Editors won`t be able to access the value that needs to be populated (ex. – webservice call) or it will be hard for them to do it (ex. – the value of the item varies on many other items). In the current example, the $next token will be implemented. It will automatically replace the token with the current siblings’ count plus one – this token is usually used in cases where there is a requirement for auto-incrementing sort order of items.
When it comes down to creating your own custom tokens, there are basically two options to choose from:
MasterVariablesReplacer classExpandInitialFieldValueProcessor classThe first option involves extending and overriding default functionality of the class, that provides the replacement mechanism for all the standard Sitecore tokens. This approach is explained in John West’s blogpost on how to add custom standard value tokens to Sitecore. It should be noted, that extending from the MasterVariablesReplacer class requires some method overriding. Be aware, that since the class is not really meant for extending in the first place you’ll have to duplicate a great amount of the private members into your own custom implementation.
The other option is the inheritance from the ExpandInitialFieldValueProcessor class, which is my preferred way to create replacement mechanisms for custom tokens in Sitecore. Using the ExpandInitialFieldValueProcessor is really easy, as it only requires you to extend from the base class and implement the void Process(ExpandInitialFieldValueArgs args) method:
namespace AndreyVinda.Processors
{
using Sitecore.Pipelines.ExpandInitialFieldValue;
public class TokenNextProcessor : ExpandInitialFieldValueProcessor
{
public override void Process(ExpandInitialFieldValueArgs args)
{
if (args.SourceField.Value.Contains("$next"))
{
if (args.TargetItem != null && args.TargetItem.Parent != null && args.TargetItem.Children != null)
{
args.Result = args.Result.Replace("$next", args.TargetItem.Parent.Children.Count.ToString());
}
else
{
args.Result = args.Result.Replace("$next", "0");
}
}
}
}
}
The code is pretty straightforward. It checks if the value of the field contains the $next token. If it does it checks if the parent is not null and the parent has children. If the parent is not null and there are children the value is set to the children`s count (the processor is executed after the child is added so the index will be 1 based), otherwise it sets the value to 0.
Once the token replacer is implemented, all that is left to do is to patch in the processor into the Sitecore pipeline config section for the expandInitialFieldValue pipeline:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
<sitecore>
<pipelines>
<expandInitialFieldValue>
<processor type="AndreyVinda.Processors.TokenNextProcessor , AndreyVinda.Processors" patch:after="processor[@type='type=Sitecore.Pipelines.ExpandInitialFieldValue.ReplaceVariables, Sitecore.Kernel']"/>
</expandInitialFieldValue>
</pipelines>
</sitecore>
</configuration>
Enjoy!
Andrey Vinda 