Tokenized data-attributes not working on VariantField/General Link combination

Question

I would like to output data-attributes on the link created by a VariantField that outputs a value from a General Link field using a token.

Simple data-attributes work fine(string as a value). But my problem is that the value of my data-attribute should come from a token.

I have implemented a custom VariantField (https://ggullentops.blogspot.com/2018/10/using-tokens-in-sitecore-sxa-variant.html) and it works fine when it is not using a General Link to populate the data.

When General Link is used, the code never gets to my custom string GetAttributeTokenValue(string fieldName, Item item) method.

Any ideas?

Regards, Nicolas

Answer 1

Lol, I have the same problem yesterday and fixed it. Decompile the "RenderVariantField" pipeline in "Sitecore.XA.Foundation.RenderingVariants.Pipelines.RenderVariantField", patch the config that the pipeline points to your implementation ("patch:instead").

There are two problems:

First Problem:

Your Link field, like the default in the Link-Component, is rendered like this (I removed the customdata-attribute...):

<div class="field-link" #DATA-ATTRIBUTE SHOULD APPEAR HERE#>
<a target="_blank" data-variantitemid="{40BCAED1-7B1F-4B00-9B68-BC26BE3094EA}" href="http://www.google.de" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-variantfieldname="Link" sc-part-of="field" class="scEnabledChrome">Link Text</a>

The data attribute is not set, because of the "RenderVariantField" pipeline. I don't know why but SXA prevents to add attributes to "images" and "general links":

protected virtual void AddWrapperDataAttributes(
  Sitecore.XA.Foundation.RenderingVariants.Fields.VariantField variantField,
  RenderVariantFieldArgs args,
  HtmlGenericControl tag)
{
  if (variantField.DataAttributes.Count <= 0)
    return;
  Field field = args.Item.Fields[variantField.FieldName];
  string first = field != null ? field.Type : string.Empty;
  if (first.Is("Image") || first.Is("General Link"))
    return;
  this.AddWrapperDataAttributes((RenderingVariantFieldBase) variantField, args, tag);
}

This could easily be fixed, but this leads directly to the second problem...

Second Problem:

Even if you change that behaviour, for example you want to add a style attribute like "style: color: #fff;", the styles will not be applied on the link, because the color will be overwritten by the "optimized.min.css" file and your link will still be black.

After deeper investigation I saw that the general link control is rendered in a different way and they missed to replace the tokens there. But overwriting this method was the solution for me! Original code:

protected virtual IDictionary<string, string> GetVariantAttributes(
  RenderingVariantFieldBase variantField,
  Item item)
{
  Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
  if (variantField.DataAttributes.Count > 0)
  {
    foreach (string dataAttribute1 in (NameObjectCollectionBase) variantField.DataAttributes)
    {
      string dataAttribute2 = variantField.DataAttributes[dataAttribute1];
      if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dataAttribute2))
      {
        string str = this.ResolveAttributeValues(dataAttribute2, item, (object) null);
        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(str))
          dictionary.Add(dataAttribute1, str);
      }
    }
  }
  return (IDictionary<string, string>) dictionary;
}

For me the code looks similar to the "AddWrapperDataAttributes"-Method, but without the part were they replace the token values. I added a new method for the "GetAttributeTokenValues"-Method which works for a "Dictionary" instead of a "AttributeCollection":

    // Custom Implementation for a Dictionary
    protected virtual void GetAttributeTokenValues(
        Item item,
        Dictionary<string, string> attributes,
        MatchCollection matches,
        string value,
        string key)
    {
        foreach (Match match in matches)
        {
            var attributeTokenValue = GetAttributeTokenValue(match.Groups[1].Value, item);
            value = value.Replace(match.Value, attributeTokenValue);
            attributes.Add(key, value);
        }
    }

Then overwrite the "GetVariantsAttribute"-Method like this:

    // Note: Override due to token customization
    protected override IDictionary<string, string> GetVariantAttributes(
        RenderingVariantFieldBase variantField,
        Item item)
    {
        var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();

        if (variantField.DataAttributes.Count <= 0)
        {
            return dictionary;
        }

        foreach (string dataAttribute1 in variantField.DataAttributes)
        {
            var dataAttribute2 = variantField.DataAttributes[dataAttribute1];
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dataAttribute2))
            {
                continue;
            }

            // Customization: We do here check for Tokens as well
            var matches = AttributeFieldToken.Matches(dataAttribute2);
            if (matches.Count > 0)
            {
                GetAttributeTokenValues(item, dictionary, matches, dataAttribute2, dataAttribute1);
            }
            else
            {
                var str = ResolveAttributeValues(dataAttribute2, item, null);
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(str))
                {
                    dictionary.Add(dataAttribute1, str);
                }
            }
        }

        return dictionary;
    }

That works like a charm! The attributes are now added to the inner link (I removed the customdata-attribute...):

<div class="field-link">
<a target="_blank" !!! style="color: #fff;" !!! data-variantitemid="{40BCAED1-7B1F-4B00-9B68-BC26BE3094EA}" href="http://www.google.de" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-variantfieldname="Link" sc-part-of="field" class="scEnabledChrome">Link Text</a>

Give it a try! Have fun!

Best regards Dirk