Apart from structured and formatted text, rich text elements can also contain references to content components and content items, and links to content items.Let’s see how to deal with these references so your rich text is displayed correctly.
How structured rich text helps you
One of the benefits of using an API-first CMS like Kontent.ai is that you’re able to clearly structure your content so it can be used in any channel. But you don’t want to be restricted to needing to know exactly what content will be included ahead of time.Structure is great, but your content creators want the freedom to add various amounts of various kinds of content. For this, you can add structure to your rich text with content components and linked items.The major difference between content components and linked items is that components exist only inside a single content item, while linked items can be reused across your project. You can read more about when to use components and when linked items.With Kontent.ai, you can link content items together in two ways:
In a rich text element – here, your items are included within the text, which requires additional work from your app to render them. This way is covered here.
This article will look at how to add structure to your rich text through examples of components. For your rich text, the principle is the same for components and linked items. The items and components can be distinguished in the JSON response, but it's not necessary for these purposes.There are two ways to implement the structure on your front end:
Defining resolvers for content types that might appear in the rich text.
Using templates or specific views for structured blocks.
With most technologies, you can choose whether to take a global approach with resolvers or iterate over blocks, such as by making use of design templates for blocks within your app.Choosing to use a structured model can help ensure you don’t need to know what type of content is being added to your rich text, as your hierarchy will be created automatically.
Resolve items and components in rich text
This example shows how to resolve embedded content in articles. The tweets can be inserted either as components or content items. You can use this approach for any other type of structured content in your rich text elements.If you don’t adjust your application, any content item or component inserted in rich text elements resolves to an empty object reference, which won’t be rendered on the page.For the final HTML, you could also work with embedded tweets, such as by calling the Twitter API.
Resolve hyperlinks to content items
This example will show you how to resolve links to content item used within the body of articles. Without adjusting your application, any link in a rich text element that points to a content item will contain an empty value. Let’s see how to resolve such links correctly.
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To ensure your tweet is resolved exactly as you’d like it, create a Tweet resolver for rich text elements.
2. Register the resolver
Register the resolver to ensure it’s used.
3. Retrieve the rich text
Now that your app knows how to resolve strings that contain tweets in them, the tweet will be included in the body.
1. Define a model
If you’re using strongly typed models, add a model for each type of content item you want to link within rich text.
2. Implement a resolver
To ensure your links are resolved correctly, you need to implement a resolver with two methods:
The first method will return the URL of an available item.
The second method will return a 404 Not found error when the linked item is not available.
A content item is unavailable when deleted or, in the case of live environments, unpublished.When building the resolver logic, you can use the link parameter to get more information about the linked content items.
3. Register the resolver
You’ll need to register the resolver to ensure its use.
4. Retrieve the article
Now that your app knows how to resolve links, it’s enough to simply retrieve an article, and the links will be included inside the body.
public class TweetResolver : IInlineContentItemsResolver<Tweet> { public string Resolve(Tweet data) { return $"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\" data-theme=\"{data.Theme}\"><a href=\"{data.TweetLink}\"></a></blockquote>"; } }
// You can also register it in IServiceCollection or another framework for dependency injection: https://github.com/kontent-ai/delivery-sdk-net/blob/master/docs/customization-and-extensibility/rich-text/string-based-linked-items-rendering.md#registering-a-resolverusing Kontent.Ai.Delivery;using Kontent.Ai.Delivery.InlineContentItems;IDeliveryClient client = DeliveryClientBuilder .WithProjectId("<YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID>") // Registers a content item resolver for tweets .WithInlineContentItemsResolver(new TweetResolver()) // Registers the generated strongly typed models .WithTypeProvider(new CustomTypeProvider()) .Build();
public class CustomContentLinkUrlResolver : IContentLinkUrlResolver{ public Task<string> ResolveLinkUrlAsync(IContentLink link) { // Resolves URLs to content items based on the Article content type if (link.ContentTypeCodename == "article") { return Task.FromResult($"/articles/{link.UrlSlug}"); } // TODO: Add the rest of the resolver logic } public Task<string> ResolveBrokenLinkUrlAsync() { // Resolves URLs to unavailable content items return Task.FromResult("/404"); }}
// You can also register the resolver in IServiceCollection or another framework for dependency injection: https://kontent.ai/learn/net-register-resolverusing Kontent.Ai.Delivery;IDeliveryClient client = DeliveryClientBuilder .WithProjectId("<YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID>") // Registers the resolver .WithContentLinkUrlResolver(new CustomContentLinkUrlResolver()) .Build();
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