Token replacement
- by ClarkeyBoy
Hey,
I currently have a system on my website whereby I can put something like "[cfe]" anywhere in the site and, when the page is rendered, it will replace it with the root to the customer front end (same for "[afe]" and admin front end - so in the admin front end I can put "[cfe]/Default.aspx" to link to the homepage on the customer front end. This is in place as I have a development version of the site, then a test and a live version too. All 3 may have different roots to each section (for example the way the website is set up, the root to the admin front end in test is "/test/Administration/", but in live and development it is just "/Administration/"). Which version it is depends on the URL - all my development sites are in a folder called "development", whereas test is in a folder called "test" and any live urls do not contain either of these. There are also 3 different databases - one for each. All 3, obviously, require a different connection string.
I also have a string replacement function in place which can change, for example, "[Product:Cards]" to point to the Cards catalogue page. Problem is that for this I go through all the products and do a replacement on "[Product:" & Product.Name() & "]".
However I would like to take this further. I would like to pick up these custom strings when the page is rendered so it picks up "[Product:Cards]" and then goes off to find product "Cards" and replaces the string with a link to the Cards page, rather than looping through all the products and doing a replace just on the off chance that there are any replacements to make.
One use for this, which I may start using in the future if I can figure out how to do this, is like on Wikipedia where you put the title of the page you want to point to, then a divider (think its a pipe from memory) then the link text. I would like to apply this to the above situation. This way broken links can also be picked up, and reported to admin (a major advantage as they can then locate them and remove the link or add the product / page that it refers to).
I would like to take this to the stage where content of entire pages can be rearranged (kinda like web parts, but not as advanced as that). I mean like so you can put [layout type="3columnImageTopRight" image="imageurl"]Content here[/layout]. This will display, as specified, an image in the top right (with padding at the left and bottom) and 3 columns - maybe with the image spanning one or two columns). The imageurl can be specified as another token: maybe like [Image:imagename.gif] or something. This replaces it with the root to the image folder and then the specified filename. I have not really looked into how I am going to split the content into 3 columns yet, but this would be something to look at for my dissertation and then implement after my project deadline at least.
Does anyone have any ideas or pointers which could help me with this? Also if this is not strictly token replacement then please point me to what it is, so I can further develop this.
Thanks in advance,
Regards,
Richard Clarke
