Ektron Developer's Guide: Building an Ektron Powered Website

Appendix A. CMS Extensions

One of the strengths of the Ektron Framework is the ability to hook into events in the system and run custom code against them. You experimented with some of the methods for running custom code against system events through the eCommerce Workflow engine and eCommerce Provider interfaces in Chapter 13. In this appendix, you will look at working with content and user oriented events using the CMS Extension system.

BENEFITS OF EKTRON FRAMEWORK, VERSION 8

Prior to version 8 of the Ektron Framework, the methodology for running custom code on certain events was to use plug-in extensions; however, with version 8 and the addition of CMS Extensions, several benefits are brought into play over the old system.

• The handler executes in the context of the request. Executing in the context of the request means that your code will have access to the user session, the different caches, and the HTTP Context of the request. In previous versions, when working with the plug-in architecture, the custom code was executed outside of the request, which meant that only some of the additional information was exposed to the custom code, limiting the ability of the developer to understand the action that was taking place. With CMS Extensions, however, your code runs in the same reference frame as the Ektron Framework itself, so all the features you have in a page are available from your extension also.

• Extensions perform better than plug-ins. Since plug-ins ran outside of the context ...