How to get the URL of the current item in the variant template?

Question

I want the URL of the current item. I added a template in the rendering variant:

<a href="https://current item url?itemid=$item.ID">Button text</a>

What should I replace "current item url" with?

Answer 1

Out of the box, you can't do this. You would need to create a custom NVelocity Template Renderer to do this. To create a tool you would need a class with a static method to get the item url, like this:

namespace MyCompany.Foundation.Variants.NVelocityExtensions
{
    public class ItemTool
    {
        public static string GetItemLink(Item item)
        {
            var options = UrlOptions.DefaultOptions;
            return LinkManager.GetItemUrl(item, options);
        }
    }
}

and then you would need to create a pipeline processor to register that renderer like this:

namespace MyCompany.Foundation.Variants.Pipelines.GetVelocityTemplateRenderers
{
    public class AddTemplateRenderers : IGetTemplateRenderersPipelineProcessor
    {
        public void Process(GetTemplateRenderersPipelineArgs args)
        {
            args.Context.Put("itemTool", new ItemTool());
        }
    }
}

Finally, you would need to patch in that processor as part of an include file:

<pipelines>
  <getVelocityTemplateRenderers>
    <processor type="MyCompany.Foundation.Variants.Pipelines.GetVelocityTemplateRenderers.AddTemplateRenderers, MyCompany.Foundation.Variants" 
               patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Variants.Abstractions.Pipelines.GetVelocityTemplateRenderers.InitializeVelocityContext, Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Variants.Abstractions'] />
  </getVelocityTemplateRenderers>
</pipelines>

Make sure its patched in after the InitializeVelocityContext processor. Then in your NVelocity template you can call it like this:

<a href="https://$itemTool.GetItemLink($item)?itemid=$item.ID">Button text</a>

You can read more about this here: https://michaellwest.blogspot.com/2017/04/custom-rendering-variant-token-tool-for-sxa.html