Shortcuts

Shortcuts will match the business objects structure starting from the application (website). For example, any application object property or method accessible by the user can be accessed as follows:

/login will return a form for the Website.Login method

/register will return a form for the Website.Register method

/configure-components will return a form for the Website.ConfigureComponents method

/user will return the logged in user profile from Website.User

/licensee will return the licensee profile from Website.Licensee

From there we can add properties to the application (website). For example, Add a property called Shop which returns a collection of products filtered to only published products sorted by date published descending. Now I can access it as:

/shop

Now say I want to filter it by a category. First, I need to create a category filter method on the products collection as Products.FilterByCategory(Category) returns Products (self). The Category parameter can be an ID, FileName or Category object. So, we can now return a filtered shop as:

/shop/filter-by-category/furniture

Which will in essence run Website.Shop.FilterByCategory(“furniture”)

Now /filter-by-category is not very nice in the URL so for each property and method you will be able to set an alternative filename. For this one I would simple call it category. So now it can be accessed:

/shop/category/furniture

Now we can add more filter methods to products for tags, brands, authors, etc.

/shop/category/shoes/tag/white/brand/nike

They can be in any order and end up with the same result, for example:

/shop/brand/nike/category/shoes/tag/white

You could also call the same filter method multiple times:

/shop/tag/large/tag/round/tag/white

You can also add methods to a collection to sort, for example, say I create a sort method which simply set the sort order on price as Products.SortByLowestPriceFirst() returns Products (self). I would give it a filename lowest-price-first. Then it could be called via:

/shop/lowest-price-first

To access an item in the shop it would be simply:

/shop/item/widget

Which will return Website.Shop.Item(“widget”)

Again, it is not very nice to have /item in the URL so I will make it the default method of the collection. So now you can access as:

/shop/widget

Which will return Website.Shop(“widget”) which is the same as Website.Shop.Item(“widget”)

If you want to use an ID, you can similarly say:

/shop/1234

Which will return Website.Shop(1234) or Website.Shop.Item(1234)

Note: to edit an object/item you need to add /edit to the URL. For example:

/shop/widget/edit

Note: any filename of an item in a collection cannot be the filename of a property or method in a collection. For example, say you name a product “tag” then /shop/tag will bring up Website.Shop.FilterByTag method, not the product Website.Shop(“tag”), as the FilterByTag method has a filename of tag. Filenames are searched for in properties first, then methods and if not found applied to the default method which in this case is Item. Alternatively, the product tag in this case, you would have to call via the item method or ID as follows:

/shop/item/tag

/shop/1234

Here are a few more examples:

Let’s examine a few URLs:

The system will first check the properties for the filename, then methods and finally and if not found will apply to the default method.

/user was found in properties

/register was found in methods

Notice /contact-us, /members and /countries were all found in the default method. We could set up a default method on the application called Item and in that method we search for the filename first in pages then groups and finally collections. So:

/contact-us returns a page

/countries returns a collection

/members returns a group

With /members/rules and /members/board-members we would also need to set up a default method on Group and call it Item which we search for the filename first in pages then subgroups. So:

/members/rules would return a page

/members/board-members would return a subgroup

Template Selection

The template name will match the calling properties/methods firstly otherwise the outputs type then any inherited types.

The system should have at least the following templates:

• method
• business-collection
• business-object