Custom Element Overview

CommonSpot's powerful Custom Element features give you maximum control over creating objects that enable contributors to easily add rich content to your site. Instead of first constructing custom queries to capture object data, then creating separate HTML templates to handle data display, you can use Custom Element options to build unique content objects that meet your site's needs. For example, to dynamically display events, create a custom Upcoming Events Element that includes site-specific title, description, date, location, audience, and expiration fields. Once deployed, contributors simply select the Upcoming Events Element from the standard Element Gallery to add this dynamic component to pages.

Unlike the collection of Elements on a page, Custom Elements are self-contained content objects, similar to Metadata Forms, defined by a collection of fields. You can either use the two dozen plus predefined CommonSpot field types (text-area, checkboxes, selection-list, image, mail, etc.) or code your own custom fields. You can also set required, default, and security values for Element fields or use predefined field masks.

Contributors enter and edit Custom Element data through a form interface. Since Custom Elements do not specify any display attributes other than a built-in name/value pair format, CommonSpot includes a Display Template feature for formatting each Element type. You can use one or more Display Templates for each Custom Element defined at your site.

Additionally, developers can build and register Render Handlers, similar to other Elements, for finer output control. When both formatting options are available, contributors choose the appropriate display template or render handler for producing a Custom Element instance.

Custom Elements also provide two rendering modes. You can produce content based on either of the following:

These options enable you to reuse content within a site. For example, your Upcoming Event object might present a calendar view for multiple events and a detailed view for a particular event.

Related Links

You can download PDF versions of the Content Contributor's, Administrator's, and Elements Reference documents from the support section of paperthin.com (requires login).

The following guides are available locally on your CommonSpot Server:

You can also download these other guides from the support section of paperthin.com (with login):

For technical support:

http://www.paperthin.com/support/