Country Dropdown based access in Tridion Content setup

Question

Requirement: In my website, there is a dropdown, which holds country list. By Click any country it will check if the country is authorized (based on some logic) and then will open some content(multimedia items like pdfs /static content).

For this, In my main component , i have used one category (countrylist) which holds list of keyword countries as metadata field (multivalued check boxes). Now, Why multi-valued check boxes --> This allows me to check for authorized logic (if any country is checked or not can be set from Tridion).

Now, if it is authorized then it will open another component(multimedia/content) content in same or new window.

For this, a new component (content component) is designed with two fields. Field 1, will hold country name (from the same category), this is to map the country name in the metadata field's checked value of the main component. And then a component link to show the content.

Is this a good approach or feasible? Is there any other suitable way of doing this? Keyword metadata or anything.

We are using DD4T at the front end, so keeping in that mind i thought of the above approach.Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

When creating this type of functionality it helps to model your content's relationships.

You basically have two options for relationships:

1. Direct relationship, as seen in Tridion's Component Presentation on a Page or Component links
2. Indirect relations, typically created by tagging items with Taxonomy (Keywords set in Component fields)

Your Web and Tridion content models include:

• Drop-down CountryList as a list in delivery
• Tridion Category with a direct (1:1) relationship to the drop-down
• Information to display for each drop-down/Keyword selection

You need to confirm:

• Is the information directly related to the CountryList? If it's strongly related in a 1:1 relationship, then you could place the metadata in the Keywords. This is good for things like language culture, currencies, or geographic location.
• Do you have more than one item to display and do authors need to control order?
  • If only one item or order doesn't matter, Taxonomy or metadata selections on the presented components work.
  • If authors need to control placement or order, then you should consider multi-value links or component presentations on a page.

You could even use Profiling and Personalization if the number of CPs is reasonable enough. I would avoid having the delivery approach completely control the Tridion content model. The extra keyword could be redundant already have much of that info.

Instead of:
Keyword1 (Keyword) <-> Keyword1 (in a "lookup" component) -> Component1

Why not intead:
Component1 with a text field set to Category?

Also if a user can't access certain values in the drop-down list, consider not letting them choose or even see them.