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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

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Agenda

• Your content everywhere!

• Demo applications using Sitecore content.

• What is required?

• How to implement now!

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Beyond the Traditional

Web • Single page applications

• Mobile applications

• App/Web-enabled devices

– Smart TVs

– Set-top devices

• Other

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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!

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EXAMPLE

Demo

http://bit.ly/sym-spa

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Mapping Framework

• We require a way to convert our Sitecore

item into a Content item

• Possible approaches:

– Manual

– Attributes

– Convention

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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+)

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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

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THE CODE

Demo

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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

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