pre-populating shared fields

Rhythmyx Technical Discussion
1

Is there any way of pre-populating shared content fields within their xml files? We have our Dublin Core fields declared in a shared table. This only has an associated xml file (not a content editor of its own). Rather than have to amend every content editor that uses these shared fields can I set a default value within the shared xml file?

2

I presume something like this in the shared xml file would do it…

                 <DefaultValue>
                           <DataLocator>
                              <PSXTextLiteral id="0">
                                 <text>Cardiff University</text>
                              </PSXTextLiteral>
                           </DataLocator>
                        </DefaultValue>
3

This approach will work. I have not checked into the exact syntax, but you’re on the right track.

There is one caveat: in most cases, extra “attributes” supplied in the shared definition cannot be overridden in the individual content editor. I’m not sure if this is true of default values as well as validations and other conditions, but it’s possible. You should test this carefully on a single editor before rolling it out.

This would mean that you could not have different default values in different content types. This may or may not matter in your case.

4

In this case I think not being able to override would be a good thing as they are meant to be the Dublin Core fields that are the same all the time.

Thanks for the reply.

In a follow-up query If I make these fields hidden in the content editors I presume they will not appear as th user fills in the content editor fields (this would be the desired behaviour for us).