Writing My Own Custom REL Tag

This walkthrough describes an implementation of an SDL Tridion custom REL tag. The tag has been written in SDLTridion 2013, but it is also applicable to Tridion 2011.

Tridion comes with a number of default REL tags, but you can also add your own custom tags. A REL tag can appear inside a Page or Component Presentation content, and it has to be published to the Content Delivery Database. These tags are executed on the Content Delivery side (presentation server) in one of the following situations:

• using the ComponentPresentationAssembler: when retrieving the content of a DCP;
• using the PageContentAssembler: when retrieving the content of a Page;
• using Content Delivery Web Service (OData), when retrieving either a Page or a DCP;

Prerequisites

In my approach, I chose to use the Content Delivery Web Service (OData) approach. This means I had to install and configure an OData service. You can do so by following the installation guide from SDL Live Content.

I also needed a Deployer that publishes everything to the CD DB. I went on and installed and configured one. For details about Deployer installations, you could consult the online documentation portal as well.

Good Part First -- The Code

A custom REL tag has to implement interface com.tridion.tcdl.TagRenderer. The example tag I implement is located in package com.tridion.extensions.customrenderer, and it only outputs the string "Hello, world!". The code below shows just that. Yes, it is Java!

public class HelloWorld implements TagRenderer {

    @Override

    public String doEndTag(Tag tag, StringBuffer content, TransformContext transformContext,
            OutputDocument document) throws TCDLTransformerException {

        content.append("Hello, world!");

        return content.toString();

    }

    @Override

    public int doStartTag(Tag tag, StringBuffer content, TransformContext transformContext,
            OutputDocument document) throws TCDLTransformerException {

        return Tag.CONTINUE_TAG_EVALUATION;

    }

    @Override

    public boolean requiresCodeBlock(TransformContext transformContext,
            OutputDocument document, Tag tag) {

        return false;

    }

}

Next, compile this class into a JAR and place it in the /lib folder among your other JARs part of your Content Delivery stack. In my case, as I'm running an OData service as a Java web application, I copied it to the [ODataWebRoot]/WEB-INF/lib folder.

The Configuration

First we need to define a mapping between a certain namespace, a tag name and its implementing class. This is used by the TCDL rendering mechanism to know that whenever it encounters that namespace and tag name, it should execute the mapped implementation class.

Create an XML file, name it my-custom-tag-bundle.xml and copy the following XML snippet in it:

<TCDLEngine>

    <Tags>

        <Tag Namespace="rel" Name="HelloWorld">

            <Handler Class="com.tridion.extensions.customrenderer.HelloWorld"

                AllowCodeBlock="false" />

        </Tag>

    </Tags>

</TCDLEngine>

Place this file among the other Tridion CD configuration files in your web application. In my case, I copied it to [ODataWebRoot]/WEB-INF/classes.

Next, we need to reference the XML above in the configuration file cd_dynamic_conf.xml. Edit this file in your web application, and add the highlighted line directly inside the existing TCDLEngine node.

NOTE: There is a bug in cd_dynamic_conf.xsd, which omits to specify TagBundle as a valid child element of TCDLEngine. The example below works, though. Use it!

<TCDLEngine>

    <TagBundle Resource="my-custom-tag-bundle.xml" />

    <Renderer Class="com.tridion.tcdl.TCDLRenderer">

        <Properties>

            <Property Name="prop1" Value="value1" />

            <Property Name="prop2" Value="value2" />

        </Properties>

    </Renderer>

</TCDLEngine>

The CM Part

Create a Dreamweaver TBB that outputs the custom REL tag. You can choose an arbitrary name and namespace. I chose name HelloWorld and namespace rel.

Place the Dreamweaver TBB on a compound Page Template called REL PT.

I needed a simple Page that would output my custom REL tag. Create a simple Page, with no Component Presentations on it. Make use of the REL PT.

Next I needed to publish the Page, so I needed a Publication Target for that. This target would have to be configured to use REL language.

At this stage, we can publish the Page and it would end up in the Content Delivery DB. There will be a record basically containing the page content in a CLOB column:

My custom REL tag: <rel:HelloWorld />

Testing it All...

In a browser, fire a request to the CD Web Service, requesting the Page Content for the Page you just published. My URL looks something like this:

http://localhost:8080/odata/odata.svc/Pages(ItemId=974,PublicationId=5)/PageContent

The response is following:

Notice the text inside the d:Content element: "My custom REL tag: Hello, world!". It shows how the call to the custom REL tag has been replaced by the value we output from the tag code.