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Thomas Krantz
Aug 12, 2010
  4117
(1 votes)

Insert EPiServer page properties into CSS-files with EPiCssModifier

Have you ever wanted to replace hard wired image urls in your css files with images selected from EPiServer? That is, without using inline css in your templates.

Usually, your css may look something like:

image

You want to let the editors pick the image for the logo, right?

If you’re using PageTypeBuilder – which you should – then it’s only a matter of adding a property attribute to your page type class. Like so:

image

The CssFragment attribute in the property declaration means that you want to replace /ui/gfx/logo.png in all css-files with whatever value LogoImage contains.

What happens when you render the page is that the css links are modified slightly. This is your original css link:

image

Instead, it will render:

image

Note the appended query string to the css link.

Then a http handler will catch the request to the css-file and do a simple search and replace based on the query string parameters. The result will be a css that looks like this:

image

Prerequisites:

1. EPiServer CMS 6

2. PageTypeBuilder

To use:

1. Unzip, compile and drop the EPiCssModifier.dll in your /bin

2. Add this to the Web.config:

image

3. Voila! You’ve got yourself an inline-css free road to happiness.

Download source and binaries for EPiCssModifier

Aug 12, 2010

Comments

Ted
Ted Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Great post! That's a pretty neat approach for certain theming scenarios!

Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Simply brilliant. Just love it!
/ Martin Söderlund

Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Really sweet, as you mentioned before today, this piece of code can be used to replace strings in JS-filed etc. aswell. WIN!
/ Robert Andersson

Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Another option, to save the parsing and text replacement on each request would be to simply put your "dynamic part" of the css in the head of the master page. :-)

Thomas Krantz
Thomas Krantz Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Steve: well that would be an option if you don't mind mixing in some css in your master page, but if your frontend devs only touch the css files then it's not an option. :)

Of course, there are some performance issues that need to be dealt with regarding the impact of html rewriting, parsing and text replacement etc.

Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

True, your solution is prettier, and easier on the front-end girls too :-) Making sure the css is cached on the client is even more important with this solution.

samuel.mitts@halvarsson.se
samuel.mitts@halvarsson.se Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Thanks! Downloaded this today and using it now on a website... Works really nice! :)

David Gross
David Gross Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Your my hero!

Anders Murel
Anders Murel Aug 29, 2011 09:18 AM

Morning Thomas!

The download URL is broken. Any chance you could fix it?

anders

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