Best practice for implementing a controller rendering using GlassController

Question

I'm looking for best practices to implement a Controller Rendering using glass mapper and TDS code-generation.

I've read and liked this approach https://www.akshaysura.com/2016/08/01/tihidi-implement-a-simple-controller-rendering-in-sitecore-mvc/ but I'm wondering if GlassController has a native way to access the rendering context as Sitecore API does with RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item

How are others creating the Controller Renderings using glass?

Answer 1

If your controller inherits fromt the GlassController<T> then you have access to several properties and methods to access either the context item or the datasource item.

Item ContextItem
Item DataSourceItem
Item LayoutItem

ContextItem just returns Sitecore.Context.Item.

DataSourceItem returns the specified data source item.

LayoutItem returns the data source item if it isn't null, otherwise the context item.

Besides those you have the following matching methods and properties. The properties casts to the type parameter specified in GlassController<T> while you can specify the type for the methods.

// Properties
T Context
T DataSource
T Layout

// Methods
T GetContextItem<T>()
T GetDataSourceItem<T>()
T GetLayoutItem<T>()

GlassController<T> also has a RenderingContextWrapper property where you have access to the current data source value and rendering parameters.

You of course also have access to the SitecoreContext property.

Answer 2

In the example below, I am using DI to new up all the Glass Mapper glasses. We are using SitecoreContext and GlasHtml in our repositories to do the work.

Controller

private readonly ICartRepository _cartRepository;

public CartController(ICartRepository cartRepository)
{
        _cartRepository = cartRepository;
}

public ActionResult MiniCart()
{
      try
      {
          var model = _cartRepository.GetHeaderMiniCart();

          return View(model);
      }
      catch (Exception e)
      {
          return IsPageEditorEditing ? ErrorView(e) : View(new MiniCart());
      }
}

Repository

private readonly ISitecoreContext _sitecoreContext;
private readonly IGlassHtml _glassHtml;
private readonly IRenderingService _renderingService;

public CartRepository(ISitecoreContext sitecoreContext, IGlassHtml glassHtml, IRenderingService renderingService)
{
      _sitecoreContext = sitecoreContext;
      _glassHtml = glassHtml;
      _renderingService = renderingService;
}

Data function, returns editable HTML so we can edit it as if it were a rendering model.

public MiniCart GetHeaderMiniCart()
{
        var model = renderingService.GetGlassModelFromDataSource<Header>();

        return new MiniCart
        {
            Icon = _glassHtml.Editable(model, x => x.CartImage),
            Link = _glassHtml.Editable(model, x => x.CartButtonLink),
            Count = 2
        };
}

The Render Service Helper interface and class.

public interface IRenderingService
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Get a glass model from the item data source
    /// </summary>
    /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
    /// <returns>T</returns>
    T GetGlassModelFromDataSource<T>() where T : GlassBase;
}


public class RenderingService : IRenderingService
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Get a glass model from the item data source
    /// </summary>
    /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
    /// <returns>T</returns>
    public T GetGlassModelFromDataSource<T>() where T : GlassBase
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.DataSource))
        {
            throw new MissingMemberException("A rendering must have a datasource.");
        }

        return RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item.GlassCast<T>();
    }
}

The model

public class MiniCart
{
     public string Icon {get; set;}
     public string Link {get; set;}
     public int Count {get; set;}
}

Then in the view

@model MiniCart

My Link @Html.Raw(Model.Link)
My Icon @Html.Raw(Model.Icon)