Key-Value Lookup Example (Tridion R5.3)

The following is adapted from a post of mine on the Tridion World Forum (an account required which is available to Tridion clients). Key-value "lookup tables" can be stored in xml files to manage Tridion-related information such as identifiers (tcm ids) or  other not-so-friendly key names and their corresponding friendly values. For example, rather than hard-coding unique Tridion identifiers for each environment, we can output a text-based configuration file. This simple example highlights re-use, separation of layers, and ease of content (re)creation.

1) Ordered Pair - embeddable schema Consisting of two items:

• key (text)
• value (text)

Description can be first and second item, with mention of "key" and a friendly name. This could even be localized to match the needs of a given publication and/or (end-user) language.

2) List of Ordered Pairs - schema Consists of one item: ordered pair (the embedded schema above, allowing multiple values) (also give this a useful namespace such as: 

http://www.example.com/schemas/listorderedpair)

3) Key Value XML Output - Component Template (XSLT)

(match the namespace above, the names space will differ in different versions of Tridion)

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:tcm="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.0"
 xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
 xmlns:tcmse="http://www.tridion.com/ContentManager/5.1/TcmScriptAssistant"
 xmlns:listorderedpair="http://www.example.com/schemas/listorderedpair"
 exclude-result-prefixes="xsl tcm xlink tcmse listorderedpair">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="no" />
<xsl:template match="/">
  <values>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="/tcm:Component/tcm:Data/tcm:Content/*" />
  </values>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*">
  <xsl:for-each select="//listorderedpair:orderedpair">
    <value>
      <xsl:attribute name="key">
       <xsl:value-of select="listorderedpair:key" />
      </xsl:attribute>
      <xsl:value-of select="listorderedpair:value" />
    </value>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

4) Ouput Generic XML - Page Template (VBScript, but any templating language can work)

[% 'this outputs a physical xml file
'component and corresponding component template that outputs actual xml via XSLT is required
 for each comp in page.componentpresentations
   writeout comp.content
 next
%]

To create the lookup XML file after setting up the embeddable schema, regular schema, and templates, first create a component based on List of Ordered Pairs. Then create the page, add the component (+ template = component presentation), and publish. The resulting file will look like:

<values>
 <value key="1">First Value</value>
 <value key="2">Second Value</value>
</values>

This example can relate  friendly names to their programatic equivalents. This can work in other scenarios and can serve as a general content-to-physical-xml file example.

If you've ever needed to make a quick and robust interface for this type of configuration data (or any content), a WCMS like Tridion can easily handle anything from the node and attributes values in an XML to rich-text, multimedia, and more complicated sets of content. 

Other use cases:

• states and state abbreviation list
• departments and abbreviations or codes
• Tridion items and their tcm-ids (ids would be hardcoded, but example could be adapted to link to items directly)
• other mappings for external databases or information

A few of these could be handled via web services, custom code, or other Tridion integration points. However, a lot can be done with Tridion's out-of-the-box functionality. Please feel free to leave suggestions, clarification, or questions. I'll likely overhaul this with a Tridion 2011 treatment as well.