Thoughts from the Wet Coast
The musings of an ASP.NET Developer from Canada's We(s)t Coast

This blog was originally posted on the DNN Community blog

DNN 8 will support creating modules using a SPA (Single Page Application) model using HTML 5, JavaScript and ASP.NET Web API based web services.  In a previous blog in this series I showed how you can set up your environment to create SPA modules. This model development style has been available ever since we added support for ASP.NET Web API, but in DNN 8 we have added support for html files to be module controls.  This means that we no longer require some form of code-behind file.  So how do we do things like registering JavaScript files that we used to do in those code behind files.  In this blog I describe how we have extended DNNs token support to provide these abilities.  As before the source code for my examples is available on Github at https://github.com/cnurse/DnnConnect.Demo.

Registering JavaScript and Css files

We already have examples in DNN of using HTML, JavaScript (AJAX) and ASP.NET Web API for developing modules.  So in this blog I will focus on the new tokens that can be used to accomplish most of the tasks that used to be done in the code behind files.  In our existing examples (the Member Directory and Messaging modules used in the DNN User Profile) we register JavaScript and css files by using a server-side control (DnnJsInclude or DNNCssInclude) or by making a call to the Client Resource Framework.  Neither of these approaches is possible with a purely HTML control.

In order to register JavaScript and css file we have added two new tokens.  These tokens are slightly different from the existing Tokens.  Traditional DNN  Tokens have the format (Entity : Property) and return a string, i.e. the token is replaced by the value of the property.

These new Tokens do not return anything – instead some action take place – in this case the JavaScript or CSS files are registered with the Client Resource Framework.  Another feature of these tokens is that the syntax is a little different as the right hand side (the “property”) is expressed as JSON.  This allows us to define a standard approach for all of these extended tokens.

*Note - as this blog uses token replace to render its templates, I have replaced the square token syntax with a normal (.

Listing 1 shows the use of the JavaScript token in the example code.  If a JavaScript Library has been defined (such as jQuery or Knockout) you can use the first form.  The first form supports  the following parameters:

• jsname – the name of the default library
• version – the version to use
• specific – a setting which controls how the framework chooses the version to render – this has 4 values
  • Exact – the exact version
  • LatestMajor – the latest major version
  • LatestMinor – the latest minor version
  • Latest – the latest version registered.

The second form is used for JavaScript files that have not been registered as JavaScript libraries.  This form supports the following parameters:

• path – the path to the location of the file
• priority – the priority to use when rendering the link – files with lower priority are rendered first
• provider – the provider to use

Note: that the token name “js” can also be used as an alias to the JavaScript token.

The example code on Github does not include an example of the Css token as the example code only includes the standard DNN module.css file but the parameters for the Css token are exactly the same as the second form of the JavaScript token. Listing 2 shows the statements used in the new Dynamic Content Type Manager which will be included in CTP 3 of DNN 8, which registers a css file for codemirror as well as the Font-Awesome icon library.  Note that remote paths, such as a CDN can be used.

An additional feature of these tokens is that they can also be used in the DNN HTML module to register JavaScript or Css.

Resx Localization Token

We have also added a token to allow Localization values to be rendered into the HTML.  This is more like a traditional Token Replace token in that this token when parsed is replaced by a value – the result of the localization.

   1:  <div class="contactCard">

   2:      <div class="right">

   3:          <a title="(Resx:{key:'Edit'})" data-bind="click: $parent.editContact">

   4:              <i class="fa fa-pencil">i>

   5:          a>

   6:          <a title="(Resx:{key:'Delete'})" data-bind="click: deleteContact">

   7:              <i class="fa fa-trash">i>

   8:          a>

   9:      div>

  10:      <div>

  11:          <span data-bind="text: firstName">span>

  12:          <span data-bind="text: lastName">span>

  13:      div>

  14:      <div>

  15:          <span>[Resx:{key:"Email"}]span>

  16:          <span data-bind="text: email">span>

  17:      div>

  18:      <div>

  19:          <span>[Resx:{key:"Phone"}]span>

  20:          <span data-bind="text: phone">span>

  21:      div>

  22:      <div>

  23:          <span>[Resx:{key:"Twitter"}]span>

  24:          <span data-bind="text: twitter">span>

  25:      div>

  26:  div>

This token also uses the JSON format.  It supports two parameters:

• key – the resource key
• localresourcefile – the local resource file

If the localresourcefile parameter is not included then the file defaults to < >.resx where HTMLFileRoot is the filename (without extension) of the current HTML file.  i.e. if the html file is ContactList.html the relevant resx file is ContactList.resx.

Note that because the html is parsed on the server before being rendered to the browser the token can be used inside an attribute, and the “localized value” is found in the HTML sent to the browser.

ModuleContext Token

In DNN8 CTP 2 there is an additional token (which is still under development) – the ModuleContext token.  This token is designed to provide some support for passing some module context to the client.  In reality the only ModuleContext that is required is the module Id, as a JavaScript developer could write a Web API service that uses the moduleId to get more detailed context.  But this requires an extra request, so we are still considering what we need to provide as a minimal set of properties for this token.

CTP 2 supports two properties for the ModuleContext token:

• moduleId – the Id of the module
• issuperuser – a Boolean that indicates whether the current user is a Super (Host) User

That's it for new tokens.  Have fun developing new SP modules – let us know what you think.

For more information

• DNN 8.0 CTP download page
• DNN Platform Github Repository
• Github Repository for this project