the RSS module i really like. it's a good example of a great module that does what it's supposed to be doing.
Alexey Rusakov is a wizard, can't put it any other way. his last posts about deletion workflow are really interesting and if you've ever thought about custom workflows i encourage you to read (apart from all the stuff at SDN5)
Alexey's Deletion Workflow Part 1 & 2, and also
Alex Shyba's Workflow with unpublishing article.
now, with that said, i just thought i'd share a little example of how you can easily make your pages 'advertise' that there's feed content available on the page. modern browsers 'light up' to indicate a feed is present, and it's really, really, really simple - it's just a link in the header to the atual rss istelf.
you don't need to have the RSS module, you can of course create your own, but i strongly recommend that you use the module.
so, assuming you have the module installed & running you'd have a node somewhere that stores your feeds, here's what you do:
1) add a new Tree list field (i -so-
love this field, i use it all the time) called "RSS_Feeds" to your content templates (even better if you got a sitewide template your content templates inherit from) and set the source of that field to your Feeds node (like '/sitecore/content/global/rss feeds' or something).
2) create a new class called RssAlternativeRenderer - this class will output the alternative links to the header of your page
3) add the following code to your new class
public static void GetRssUrls()
{
Item root = Sitecore.Context.Item;
System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
if (root != null)
{
if (root.Fields["Rss_Feeds"]!=null)
{
Sitecore.Data.Fields.MultilistField mf = root.Fields["Rss_Feeds"];
if (mf != null)
{
if (mf.Count > 0)
{
foreach (Item itm in mf.GetItems())
{
sb.AppendLine("<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"application/rss+xml\" title=\"" + itm.Fields["Title"].Value.ToString() + "\" href=\"" + itm.Paths.GetFriendlyUrl() + "\" />");
}
}
}
Sitecore.Context.Page.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString()));
}
}
}
4) add the following code to your Page_Load event
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
RssAlternativeRenderer.GetRssUrls();
}
that's it. now compatible browsers will 'light up' all shiny and stuff when you select a feed that will be available on a page - ain't that great for christmas?
finally, wrapping up,
Alex de Groot just posted his
1-year-blogging-anniversary post. Congratulations!
today is friday - today is afterwork - today is gonna be one more day that i forget to go buy gifts.. but hey, at least it's friday..
take care,
P.
