Sitecore Helper to render SXA Component inside cshtml

Question

I need to render the Social Media Share component in the cshtml of Cloned Search Results, is there a Sitecore Helper to render a component in the view? I am using SXA 1.8 so I know that we have the ability to render a component inside a rendering variant.

Answer 1

You have 2 main options:

Use a placeholder

In your razor view, just add a placeholder, then in the Experience Editor, your marketers/editors can add the Social Media Share module to that.

Pros - its nice and easy, give flexibility too if you wanted to add anything else. Cons - the editors have to remember to add the component every time.

Render the component inline

You can also use the Sitecore Html helper to render a component:

@Html.Sitecore().Rendering("<your rendering definition item id>", new { DataSource = "<your datasource item id>" })

Add the item Id of the Social Media Share component as the first parameter. You will also need to create a datasource item for that component and you add the DataSource item Id to that too.

You can also add parameters for things like Caching:

@Html.Sitecore().Rendering("<your rendering definition item id>", new { DataSource = "<your datasource item id>", Cacheable = true, CacheKey = "create a cache key", Cache_VaryByData = true })

Pros - again, its simple to do, the content editors don't have to remember to add any extra components on the page Cons - you are reliant on a content item always being there. If that gets deleted, you will not get any warnings, this component will just fail.