Last week I participated in a Hackathon for our client. It all started with a kickoff meeting with business users. They shared their daily experience of the Tridion system and implementation. Likes and dislikes were discussed and also where they lose time working with cms (amount of clicks). It was a fruitful session, I must say. After voting about business value and guestimates on developer effort we got an ordered list of issues to tackle.
Hackathon development phase
After the business users left the developers brainstormed about possible solutions. To name a few:
- Additional user training
- Installing existing extensions from the Alchemy Webstore.
- Developing new Alchemy extensions
- Automation via the event system
- Extend DD4T rendering
- ...
During the next couple of days, we started building. At the end of our available time, we developed 3 very useful Alchemy extensions (and some other improvements). The extensions itself are too much targetted for the customer implementation, but what I can share are some very useful tips and tricks.
Top 5 Alchemy developer tips
#1 - Starting and learning Alchemy
The best way to start with Alchemy development is to read the docs, install the VS project templates.
To learn about development, clone and inspect the BigBox of Samples plugin. Also, browse the Alchemy gallery to see what is there for inspiration. Also to not reinvent the wheel. Most plugins are open source and have a source code link. In case you wonder, how did they do XYZ... If no source available you could opt for downloading the A4T, rename the file to .ZIP and browse it. Javascript is easy, for the server-side code you need a decompiler to peek.
#2 - Custom configuration settings in client-side javascript
It is possible to create custom configuration settings for your extension. By default, you can use them in your serverside controller. Optionally, you can use them in your javascript command file. Then you must not forget to add the client=true attribute in a4t.config:
<settings>
<InitialSize client="true">400px</InitialSize>
</settings>
#3 - Disable Alchemy Webstore popup
By default everytime you do a build in VS, you will be prompted with an upload-to-alchemy popup window. While developing locally you do not need it and luckily there is a way to turn it off. Right-click the project and unload the project. Then right-click again to edit the project file and search for:
<AlchemyUploadDialog>DEBUG|RELEASE</AlchemyUploadDialog>
If you remove DEBUG| it will only prompt when building in release mode.
#4 - Deploy on VS build
Peter Kjaer developed various very useful Powershell modules for Tridion. There is a stable Alchemy module available to install, update and uninstall Alchemy extensions. If you install it, you can configure you VS project post-build event to install/update your plugin automatically. Then you only need to refresh the GUI for loading you extension.
#5 - Choose between client- and server-side
Working with the minimal documented Tridion Anguilla javascript framework can be a very time-consuming experience. Sometimes certain logic can be implemented with Tridion Core Service, so use the Controller to implement logic there. It is easier to get things done server side.
Hope this helps. If you have anything to add, please let me know!