Henrik Fransas
Nov 6, 2014
visibility 6152
star star star star star
(0 votes)

How to use TinyMce in a custom property the EPiServer Way–Clean Version

Thanks to feedback from Erik Kärrsgård at EPiServer I learned that I did not need to rewrite all of the code EPiServer has done, it is possible to just extend it. This is great news since it makes it more possible to work even in the future when EPiServer has done some changes to their code.

If you look at the code in my previous post (http://world.episerver.com/Blogs/Henrik-Fransas/Dates/2014/10/how-to-use-tinymce-the-episerver-way-in-a-custom-property/) you can see how the property is build up and the amount of code that I needed to copy. Now the editor descriptor looks like this:

using EPiServer; using EPiServer.Cms.Shell.Extensions; using EPiServer.Core; using EPiServer.ServiceLocation; using EPiServer.Shell.ObjectEditing; using EPiServer.Shell.ObjectEditing.EditorDescriptors; using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace TinyMceInCustomProperties.Business.EditorDescriptors { [EditorDescriptorRegistration(TargetType = typeof(XhtmlString), EditorDescriptorBehavior = EditorDescriptorBehavior.ExtendBase, UIHint = Global.SiteUIHints.ExtendedXhtml)] public class ExtendedXhtmlEditorDescriptor : EditorDescriptor { public override void ModifyMetadata(ExtendedMetadata metadata, IEnumerable<Attribute> attributes) { base.ModifyMetadata(metadata, attributes); ExtendedMetadata extendedMetadatum = metadata.FindTopMostContentMetadata(); IContent model; if (extendedMetadatum != null) { model = extendedMetadatum.Model as IContent; } else { model = null; } metadata.ClientEditingClass = "alloy/editors/ExtendedTinyMCEEditor"; metadata.EditorConfiguration.Add("parentValue", ParentValue(model, metadata.PropertyName)); } private string ParentValue(IContent page, string propertyName) { if (page.ParentLink != null) { var repro = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IContentRepository>(); IContent parent; if (repro.TryGet(page.ParentLink, out parent)) { return ((ContentData)parent).GetPropertyValue(propertyName) ?? string.Empty; } } return string.Empty; } } }

The key thing in this is that I decorate the class with this: EditorDescriptorBehavior = EditorDescriptorBehavior.ExtendBase. This tells EPiServer to use the descriptor for XhtmlString and extend it.

The dojo/javascript files also is a lot smaller with not much duplications of code, the only places is the functions where I need to insert my code. It now looks like this:

define([ // dojo "dojo/_base/declare", // epi "epi-cms/contentediting/editors/TinyMCEEditor", // templates "dojo/text!./templates/ExtendedTinyMCEEditor.html" ], function ( //dojo declare, // epi TinyMCEEditor, // templates template ) { return declare([TinyMCEEditor], { // summary: // Widget for the tinyMCE editor. templateString: template, postCreate: function () { this.inherited(arguments); this.connect(this.inheritButton, "onclick", "onInheritButtonClick"); this.connect(this.inheritFromParentRadioButton, "onclick", "onInheritRadioButtonClick"); this.connect(this.useLocalValueRadioButton, "onclick", "onInheritRadioButtonClick"); this.divParentValue.innerHTML = this._unencodedValue(this.parentValue); }, onInheritButtonClick: function () { var text = this.divParentValue.innerHTML; var ed = this.getEditor(); if (ed && ed.initialized) { ed.setContent(text); } else { this.editorFrame.value = text; } this._onChange(text); }, onInheritRadioButtonClick: function () { var ed = this.getEditor(); if (ed && ed.initialized) { this._onChange(ed.getContent(), true); } }, _setValueAttr: function (newValue) { //summary: // Value's setter // // tags: // protected var ed = this.getEditor(), editableValue = newValue || ""; var isInheritting = editableValue.charAt(0) == "1", editableValue = this._unencodedValue(newValue || ""); if (isInheritting) { this.inheritFromParentRadioButton.checked = true; this.useLocalValueRadioButton.checked = false; } else { this.useLocalValueRadioButton.checked = true; this.inheritFromParentRadioButton.checked = false; } this.inherited(arguments, [editableValue]); }, _onChange: function (val, forcechange) { // summary: // Raised when the editor's content is changed. // // val: // The editor's changed value // // tags: // callback public forcechange = !!forcechange; var hasChanged = this.get("_editorValue") !== val || forcechange === true; if (hasChanged) { this.set("_editorValue", val); val = this._encodedValue(val); this._set("value", val); if (this.validate()) { this.set("_hasPendingChanges", false); this.onChange(val); } } }, _encodedValue: function (orgValue) { var useLocal = this.useLocalValueRadioButton.checked; return (useLocal ? "0:" : "1:") + orgValue; }, _unencodedValue: function (orgValue) { var isSet = orgValue != null && orgValue !== undefined && orgValue.length >= 2 && orgValue.charAt(1) == ":"; return isSet ? orgValue.substring(2) : orgValue; } }); });

The html-template looks the same so look at the previous post to see how it looks like.

The code on github is updated so just clone it at try it out.

The next step is to make this also available in the OnPageEdit mode.

The source code for this you can find here: https://github.com/hesta96/TinyMceInCustomProperties

Thanks again to Erik for his update on the code!

Happy coding!

Nov 06, 2014

Comments

error Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Surviving a Dirty Feed. Part 3: Error Handling and Event Batching

Committing a 250,000-row Optimizely catalog import row by row, returning a per-row failure report, and coalescing catalog events into one per batch.

Stanisław Szołkowski | Oct 16, 2026 |

Building UI Extensions for Optimizely SaaS CMS

Introduction Developers have been extending the functionality of Optimizely PaaS CMS for years using addons built in C# and deployed as NuGet...

Mark Stott | Oct 15, 2026

Cheapskate AI Translator: Because Translation Should Not Require a Second Mortgage

There is a particular kind of software project that begins with a detailed architecture document, a product roadmap, and a carefully assembled...

Linh Doan Cuu | Oct 15, 2026

Computed Fields in CMS 13 Content Contracts with Optimizely Graph

Content Contracts in Optimizely CMS 13 allow different content types to share a common structure when querying Optimizely Graph. But what if the...

Mardy | Oct 14, 2026