Adding Attributes to Rendered Link Programmatically

Question

We need to apply attributes to rendered links conditionally. For example, if an internal link points to a specific template, add an attribute to the rendered anchor tag. Our initial efforts have focused on the <renderField> pipeline. We have patched in a processor attempted to modify the args.RenderParameters, but so far we're out of luck.

Ultimately, this is so that we can open certain links with modal windows.

Answer 1

We have just recently implemented a solution for this, to handle links to a specific template (Modal) differently.

We created a custom renderField pipeline processor like the following:

namespace Pipelines
{
    public class RenderModalLink
    {
        public void Process(RenderFieldArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");

            if (Sitecore.Context.Site.DisplayMode == Sitecore.Sites.DisplayMode.Edit)
                return;

            var field = Sitecore.Data.Fields.FieldTypeManager.GetField(args.GetField());

            // Is it a linkField
            if (field is LinkField)
            {
                // Explicit cast required for some reason
                LinkField linkField = (LinkField) field;

                // Check if link is
                if (linkField.LinkType.ToLower() == "internal")
                {
                    // Check if field has a value
                    if (linkField.TargetItem == null)
                        return;

                    // Check if target item derives modal template (Synthesis)
                    var modal = linkField.TargetItem.As<IModalItem>();

                    if (modal != null)
                    {

                        // Add your custom parameters (HTML attributes) here
                        args.Parameters.Add("data-modal", linkField.GetFriendlyUrl());
                        args.Parameters.Add("href", "javascript:void(0);");
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

and patched it in after the SetParameters processor:

<renderField>
  <processor type="Pipelines.RenderModalLink" patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.SetParameters, Sitecore.Kernel']"/>
</renderField>