Inline editing of rendering parameters in Experience Editor

Question

I'm investigating multiple solutions for being able to dynamically build a page using multiple blocks of HTML, and other non-structural content. I'm trying to optimise the editing experience and minimise any creation of superfluous Items in the tree. My more general question this and other approaches to this problem can be found here: What is the recommended pattern for dynamic paragraph systems in Sitecore?

I'm currently looking into versioned rendering parameters, but I'm not able to find any documentation on in place editing of those parameters on the page. Ideally, I'd like to use the Rich Text Editor in place, just like the field editing experience. Having a dialog would a less desirable fallback.

Does anyone know if this is possible?

I am using Sitecore 8.1.

Answer 1

Rendering parameters are stored in Sitecore as a query string eg:

param1=value1&param2=value2 etc....

And this query string is stored as an attribute on an XML node in the __Renderings or __Final Renderings field on the context item, like this:

<r uid="{91C058E4-4307-4391-98B2-A7629FF9C729}" 
   p:before="r[@uid='{6717EAA7-0931-46D9-8E89-21678756C012}']" 
   s:id="{2152C804-3AD4-44B4-BC3E-9215018C8B17}" 
   s:par="Advert Placement=%7B6F568FE1-FBD3-4685-B133-4EFACC0192FE%7D"
   s:ph="main" />

Because of this, it makes it not a good place for fields like a Rich Text field. It really should be limited to simple fields/links etc...

It is not a good idea to store page or module content in those fields either. You will not be able to reuse the content anywhere else. It would only be available to that one component. Also if you removed the component, the content would get removed also.

You can already edit the rendering parameters via the Edit Component Properties dialog - so your fall back is in place.

To be able to edit the parameters in line, you would have to add elements to your markup when PageMode.IsExperienceEditor is true.

You would then also need to hook into the save button in the Experience Editor and use the values in your custom fields to build a query string and store that in the __Final Renderings field of the current context item against the correct component XML node.

From a content editors POV, I would say it makes more sense keeping the rendering parameters on the component properties dialog and not using many at all. For me, rendering parameters should only be used to define unique presentation variants for the component being added to the page and not have anything to do with the content being rendered.