SITECORE Multi-Sites with Shared Pages

SITECORE Multi-Sites with Shared Pages

  July 14, 2019    Sitecore Box

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Overview

SITECORE support having multiple website in a single instance, every site has it is own pages, content, etc...  And you can add shared content items between all sites as you can see in the below screenshot:

That’s awesome! But the challenge comes when you need to have shared pages between more than one sites. Don’t worry it is doable, but we need to do some coding here.

What to do?

I am supposing that you know how to configure multiple website in the normal scenario, if you don’t, please check out this document by Sitecore.

After configuring our sites we need to go through the below steps to have the shared pages working fine:

1)   We need to override “GetItemUrl” method to update the URLs for the items under shared content to be formed the same as the links under the site itself.

We need to be able to browse the pages under the shared folder without include “/Global/” in the URL, for example if we are on “site1” (suppose that the URL is http://site1) and we want to browse this page “/sitecore/content/Global/Products/Product1” then the URL should be this http://site1/Products/Product1 instead of http://site1/Global/Products/Product1 and if we are on “Site2” the URL should be this http://site2/Products/Product1

	public class CustomLinkProvider : Sitecore.Links.LinkProvider
	{
	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the item Url.
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="item">The item.</param>
	/// <param name="options">The options.</param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	public override string GetItemUrl(Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item, Sitecore.Links.UrlOptions options)
	{
	var linkBuilder = new LinkBuilder(options);
	string str = linkBuilder.GetItemUrl(item);
	return str;
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the item URL.
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="item">The item.</param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	public string GetItemUrl(Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item)
	{
	return GetItemUrl(item, LinkManager.GetDefaultUrlOptions());
	}
	public new class LinkBuilder : Sitecore.Links.LinkProvider.LinkBuilder
	{
	private UrlOptions Options { get; set; }
	public LinkBuilder(UrlOptions options)
	: base(options)
	{
	Options = options;
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the Url.
	///
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="item">The item.</param>
	/// <returns/>
	public new string GetItemUrl(Item item)
	{
	return this.BuildItemUrl(item);
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Builds the item Url.
	///
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="item">The item.</param>
	/// <returns/>
	protected override string BuildItemUrl(Item item)
	{
	try
	{
	if (item == null)
	{
	return base.BuildItemUrl(item);
	}
	Item sharedGlobalItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem("{4813AC95-D5E9-40AC-938C-DAAEC9FA4A7C}");//here is the ID for Global folder (/sitecore/content/Global/Products)
	bool matched = false;
	if (sharedGlobalItem != null && sharedGlobalItem.Axes.IsAncestorOf(item))
	{
	matched = true;
	}
	if (matched)
	{
	if (sharedGlobalItem == null)
	{
	return base.BuildItemUrl(item);
	}
	string sharedGlobalItemName = sharedGlobalItem.Name.ToLowerInvariant();
	var itemPath = item.Paths.ContentPath.ToLowerInvariant();
	var categoryIndex = itemPath.IndexOf(sharedGlobalItemName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase);
	if (categoryIndex == -1)
	{
	categoryIndex = Sitecore.MainUtil.DecodeName(itemPath).IndexOf(sharedGlobalItemName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase);
	}
	if (categoryIndex != -1)
	{
	var suffixPath = itemPath.Substring(categoryIndex + sharedGlobalItemName.Length).Replace('/' + sharedGlobalItemName, "/");
	itemPath = string.Format("/{0}{1}", sharedGlobalItemName, suffixPath);
	}
	SiteInfo siteInfo = this.ResolveTargetSite(item);
	var url = base.BuildItemUrl(this.GetServerUrlElement(siteInfo), itemPath);
	return this.Options.LowercaseUrls ? url.ToLowerInvariant() : url;
	}
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
	Log.Error(ex.Message, ex, this);
	}
	var baseurl = base.BuildItemUrl(item);
	return this.Options.LowercaseUrls ? baseurl.ToLowerInvariant() : baseurl;
	}
	}
	}

view raw CustomLinkProvider.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2)   After updating the URL, now we need to process the request and update “Context.Item” value since we don’t have “Products” item under the sites, and this can be done by adding a new processor to resolve such kind of request.

To do that we need to add a new processor in the <httpRequestBegin> to be inherited from HttpRequestProcessor class. In this processor we need to update this property “Context.Item” with the matched item based on the current request.

So in our above example the request will be:

Request: http://site1/Products/Product1

Context item : Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem( “/sitecore/content/Global/Products/Product1”)

	public class SharedContentResolver : HttpRequestProcessor
	{
	public override void Process(HttpRequestArgs args)
	{
	try
	{
	if (Context.Item != null || Context.Database == null || args.Url.ItemPath.Length == 0) return;
	var urlSegments = args.Url.FilePath.Split('/');
	if (urlSegments.Length < 2)
	return;
	Item sharedGlobalItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem("{4813AC95-D5E9-40AC-938C-DAAEC9FA4A7C}");//here is the ID for Global folder (/sitecore/content/Global/Products)
	bool notMatched = false;
	if (sharedGlobalItem != null)
	{
	var sharedGlobalItemName = sharedGlobalItem.Name.ToLowerInvariant();
	if (urlSegments[1] == sharedGlobalItemName)
	{
	notMatched = true;
	}
	}
	if (sharedGlobalItem == null || !notMatched)
	return;
	string matchedGlobalItemPath = string.Empty;
	matchedGlobalItemPath = sharedGlobalItem.Paths.Path + "/" + urlSegments[2];// ex:/sitecore/content/Global/Products/Product1
	var contextItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(matchedGlobalItemPath);
	if (contextItem == null)
	{
	matchedGlobalItemPath = Sitecore.MainUtil.DecodeName(matchedGlobalItemPath);
	contextItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(matchedGlobalItemPath);
	}
	if (contextItem != null)
	{
	Context.Item = contextItem;
	}
	return;
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
	Log.Error(ex.Message, ex, this);
	return;
	}
	}
	}

view raw SharedContentResolver.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

       Don’t forget to add the link provider and the processer to the config using the below              patch:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/">
	<sitecore>
	<pipelines>
	<httpRequestBegin>
	<processor patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver, Sitecore.Kernel']" type="YourNamespace.SharedContentResolver, YourAssembly">
	</processor>
	</httpRequestBegin>
	</pipelines>
	<linkManager>
	<providers>
	<add name="sitecore">
	<patch:attribute name="type">YourNamespace.CustomLinkProvider, YourAssembly</patch:attribute>
	</add>
	</providers>
	</linkManager>
	</sitecore>
	</configuration>

view raw ItemResolver.config hosted with ❤ by GitHub

3)   The last step is make sure that your sitemap.xml is working as expected any update any code login accordingly.