DXM Release Notes - 3 September 2020

[ShikhaGupta]

Build 17697, September 3rd, 2020  

 Input Form Selector

This release contains two incremental upgrades to the Input Form Selector control that introduces more customization capabilities while ensuring backward compatibility with the Dropdown Container control that it replaces. 

Background: 

The Input Form Selector is a new control introduced in early 2020 to address performance related issues associated with the use of the Dropdown Container to deliver dynamic experiences in Crownpeak Input Templates. It allows users to manipulate the authoring experience through a dropdown selector of authoring options.    

Even though the Dropdown Container control ultimately provided the desired authoring experience and the flexibility users asked for, it also placed a huge performance burden on the database because of the way data and content fields were stored and loaded.  This resulted in a poor authoring experience with long asset saving, loading, and rendering times.   

The new Input Form Selector increases speeds with an efficient process that loads and compiles various authoring experiences defined in separate Input Template files called Sub Input files. These Sub Input files have all the same rich capabilities offered to any input file and can be defined within the template’s folder, or any location in the CMS. This process provides the flexibility users have asked for and the reusability developers expect, all without impacting the performance of the CMS.    

The first update in this release adds an optional key-value pair list of parameters that can be used to share information from the Input Form with all its Sub Input Forms. By passing these parameters, developers have more control over Sub Input Forms, increasing re-usability and achieving parity with the Dropdown Container controls. 

Secondly, we’ve introduced the ability to define custom values for Sub Input Forms. By using the new Input Form Parameters object in the collection of Sub Input Forms, developers can provide both value and the target form. Input forms with Form Selector controls can now use the same values used by the Dropdown Container controls they’re replacing. 

 For code examples, please refer: Input Form Selector