Numbering items in a list slot

Rhythmyx Technical Discussion
1

Is it possible to number the items in a list slot? If so, would it be possible to make a template that produces something like this:

theImages[0] = '/images/featuredContent/FCnews.jpg';
altText[0] = 'The News';
theImages[1] = '/images/featuredContent/FCstulife.jpg';
altText[1] = 'Student Life';
theImages[2] = '/images/featuredContent/FCimagine.jpg';
altText[2] = 'Imagine Student Artists';

If I could publish this as a Javascript file, users could update rotating images and alt attributes on the home page. As it is, the URLs and alt attributes are hard-coded in the Javascript.

Is it possible to call a slot using variables, like this:

#slot("sList" "<div id=$var>" "theImages[$var]" "" "</div>" "")##
2

I think you could use something like this:

    #initslot("sList")
    #set( $i = 0 )
      #if($sys.currentslot.relresults.size() > 0)
         #foreach( $relresult in $sys.currentslot.relresults )
	      theImages[i] = '/images/featuredContent/FCnews.jpg'; 
                   altText[i] = 'The News'; 
    	#set( $i = $i + 1 )
     	#end
         #end
      #end
3

Nice, except you’re hard-coding the slot contents. How about something more like
altText[i] = $sys.item.getProperty(“img_alt”).String);

4

Right on, it was more of an example. That should work.

5

To anyone searching the forums, you should use $relresult.getNode() in the foreach loop. Using sys.item.getProperty() will return the current item you are viewing the slot from and is probably not what you want. Thus the final code may look like:


#initslot("sList")
   #set( $i = 0 )
   #if($sys.currentslot.relresults.size() > 0)
      #foreach( $relresult in $sys.currentslot.relresults )
         theImages[i] = $relresult.getNode().getProperty('displaytitle').String; 
         altText[i] = $relresult.getNode().getProperty('img_alt').String; ; 
         #set( $i = $i + 1 )
      #end
   #end
#end
6

Another Velocity tip: You can use $velocityCount within the #foreach loop - it’s the default name for the loop counter. It starts at 1 by default. I understand that you can rename the counter, and set it to start at 0 in the velocity.properties file, but I can’t confirm that, since I haven’t tried it.

In this case, you’d use ($velocityCount - 1) in place of i in your code example.

-Kathleen

7

Could I use $sys.index?

$sys.index - Integer - A loop counter for Slot contents; can only be used in a Slot. The index of the Content Items in the Slot. Indexing begins at 1. (In other words, the first Content Item in the Slot is index1, the second index 2, and so on.) This variable can be used to modify the rendering of different rows in the Slot, or to add more data to the Snippet rendering.
Used in: Templates

8

It turns out this was all I needed for my SnRotate snippet template that formats my list items:

  theImages[$sys.index] = '$rxs_navbase/images/featuredContent/$sys.item.getProperty('sys_title').String$sys.item.getProperty('sys_suffix').String';
  altText[$sys.index] = '$sys.item.getProperty('img_alt').String';

PgRotatingImages is a lot of Javascript and one slot:

 #slot("sList" "" "" "" "" "template=SnRotate")##

The resulting Javascript works, but I’m still hard-coding too much. Can’t I use $sys.pub_path instead of “/images/featuredContent”? I must have been doing it wrong.

Also, the file is publishing as siteFunctions.html instead of siteFunctions.js, even though I set the Location Suffix in the template to js.

Here’s my Location Scheme:

$baseUrl = '';
$filename =$sys.item.getProperty('rx:sys_title').String;
if ($user.psoRelationships.isLandingPage($sys.item.getProperty('sys_contentid').String)) { 
  $filename = 'index'; 
}
$baseUrl + $sys.pub_path + $filename + $rx.location.getFirstDefined($sys.item,'rx:activeimg_ext,rx:sys_suffix', '.html');
9

Since numbering now works fine, I started two new threads asking about hidden content fields and $sys.pub.path.