Reusing Properties From Another Existing Component

Reusing Properties From Another Existing Component

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Developer System Administrator

This page explains how to reuse the ModelProperties classes in another ModelProperties.

Reusing ModelProperties allows you to share properties between components without duplicating their definition.

Extracting Values from the Current Object Using Another ModelProperties

The SameLevelPropertiesToNestedPropertiesConverter class reads the same fields as the current ModelProperties, but serializes the sub model into its own dictionary.

public class StylingModelProperties : IModelProperties {
     [SitecoreProperty("Color")]
     public string Color { get; set; }
 
     [SitecoreProperty("Size")]
     public string SizeInPercent { get; set; }
}
 
public class SimpleModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SitecoreProperty("Name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
 
    [SitecoreProperty("Styling", PropertyConverter = typeof(SameLevelPropertiesToNestedPropertiesConverter<StylingModelProperties>))
    public IDictionary<string, string> StylingProperties { get; set; }
}

If you would rather have a full Model, with Properties and RawProperties, you can use the SameLevelPropertiesToSubModelConverter class instead:

public class SimpleModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SitecoreProperty("Name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
 
    [SitecoreProperty("Styling", PropertyConverter = typeof(SameLevelPropertiesToSubModelConverter <StylingModelProperties>))
    public SubModelProperties<SameLevelPropertiesToSubModelConverter> StylingModel { get; set; }
}

In this scenario, SimpleModelProperties has a StylingModel with two properties:

• Properties, which matches the Properties attribute like in a standard model
• RawProperties, which matches the RawProperties attribute like in a standard model

This allows for the ModelProperties classes to be segmented and reused.

Extracting Values from a Referenced Item ID

In Sitecore, there are many fields that store an item ID as a reference.

The Coveo for Sitecore Hive framework also provides a way to extract properties using a different data source, defined as an ID in a field.

public class StylingModelProperties : IModelProperties {
     [SitecoreProperty("Color")]
     public string Color { get; set; }
 
     [SitecoreProperty("Size")]
     public string SizeInPercent { get; set; }
}
 
public class SimpleModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SitecoreProperty("StylingReference", PropertyConverter = typeof(NestedItemToModelPropertiesConverter<StylingModelProperties>))
    public StylingModelProperties StylingProperties { get; set; }
}

Writing the Nested Properties into a JSON Object

When using nested properties, you might want to output its values to the Coveo JavaScript Search Framework.

By using the NestedWritableModelSerializer class, you can serialize another ModelProperties into a JSON string.

public class StylingModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SitecoreProperty("Color")]
    [SearchUiProperty]
    public string Color { get; set; }
}
 
public class SimpleModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SearchUiProperty(PropertySerializer = typeof(NestedWritableModelSerializer<StylingModelProperties>)]
    public StylingModelProperties Styling { get; set; }
}

If you want to apply those values to the current element, you can use the unfoldDictionaryToAttributes prebinding helper method (see Understanding Prebinding Helpers in Coveo for Sitecore Hive).

public class SimpleModelProperties : IModelProperties {
    [SearchUiProperty(Prebind = Prebind.DICTIONARY_UNFOLD, PropertySerializer = typeof(NestedWritableModelSerializer<StylingModelProperties>)]
    public StylingModelProperties Styling { get; set; }
}

<div data-color='red' data-styling='{"color": "red" }' data-prebind-styling='unfoldDictionaryToAttributes'></div>