Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Sitecore Content as a Service

Sean Kearney, Solution Architect

Hedgehog Development

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Introductions

• Sean Kearney

– Sitecore developer for 5+ years

– Sitecore MVP since 2009

– Contributed to

“Professional Sitecore Development”

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Introductions

• Hedgehog Development

– Team Development for Sitecore

– CMS Database Compare Tool

– Sitecore Solution & Technology Partner

– Multiple Site of the Year winner

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Agenda

• Your content everywhere!

• Demo applications using Sitecore content.

• What is required?

• How to implement now!

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Beyond the Traditional

Web • Single page applications

• Mobile applications

• App/Web-enabled devices

– Smart TVs

– Set-top devices

• Other

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Sitecore as Our Enterprise

CMS

• Sitecore is our platform of choice.

• Content is more than stuff on a page.

• The CMS that powers our site should

power our organization!

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

EXAMPLE

Demo

http://bit.ly/sym-spa

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

What Sitecore Has…

• Powerful / friendly UI for managing content

• Robust .NET API

– Only available within Sitecore application

• SOAP Web Service

– Unfriendly.

• API based on Items and Fields

– Non-serializable

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

What Do We Need?

• Web API - A “REST” service – “Sitecore Navigator”

– POCO content models

– Mapping framework

– Efficient JSON Serialization

• Consumable APIs – JavaScript API

– iOS

– .NET API

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Architecture

Sit

eco

re S

erv

er

Content Navigator

RE

ST

Se

rvic

e

Content APIs

Sitecore Kernel

Get Content Item(s)

.NET API

JavaScript API

iOS API

JSON Serialization

Plain JSON

Get Content Item(s)

Get Sitecore Item(s)

Item Mapping

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Content Models • POCO Classes

– Simple and lightweight

– Sitecore fields are mapped to a model’s properties

• Base ContentItem – Key

– Name

– Template

– Path

• Content Fields – Rich Text

– Image

– Link

– Reference

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Mapping Framework

• We require a way to convert our Sitecore

item into a Content item

• Possible approaches:

– Manual

– Attributes

– Convention

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

REST Content Service

• A service endpoint inside our Sitecore site

• Multiple ways to implement:

– Generic/HTTP Handler

– MVC Controller/Action

– WCF Web API (pre-MVC 4)

– ASP.NET Web API (MVC 4+)

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

REST Content Service

• Based on Sitecore’s hierarchical structure

• Seven generic methods to get any piece of content: – Item

– Items

– Parent

– Ancestors

– Children

– Descendants

– Referrers

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

THE CODE

Demo

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Content as a Service

• By leveraging existing technology we

expand the capabilities of Sitecore.

• Having a REST service enables

interoperability across many platforms.

• Sitecore can publish content to your entire

organization!

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Helpful Tools

• Code Generation

Team Development for Sitecore

http://TeamDevelopmentForSitecore.com

• Editing Sitecore items in Visual Studio

Sitecore Rocks

http://vsplugins.sitecore.net

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Resources

• Blog: http://SeanKearney.com

• Twitter: @SeanKearney

• Code:

github.com/hedgehogdevelopment

bit.ly/hhog-git

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Q&A

Sitecore Content as a Service

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne

Feedback Appreciated!

Please take a moment to provide session feedback via the mobile site.

http://www.sitecore.net/SymNA

Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne