Specifying ECL DisplayTypes in a Web Schemas

Question

I just created my first External Content Library (ECL) provider for SDL Tridion 2013. It connects to a third party image/video rendering and streaming service similar to SDL Media Manager. I based this on the sample Vimeo Provider in the documentation.

My third party service exposes Folders, Images, Image Collections, Videos, Mixed Media Collections and 360 degree product rotation sets. I have exposed these as different DisplayTypes and created them as different classes implementing the IContentLibraryMultimediaItem interface. This works really well, and I am super impressed by this new extension point. I can preview video and thumbnails within the Tridion interface, and use them in my templates.

Now I am creating a content schema which has a multimedia link field to link to these items. I have selected my new mount point schema in "Available Schemas" box of my link field, but can’t find a way to specify only certain display types (e.g. Video, Image or ImageSet etc.) to be allowed in this field. Is this possible? Or do I have to create a mount point for each content type in my External Content Library?

Answer 1

A Mountpoint in ECL indeed only gets a single Schema, so all your ECL subtypes are currently not separated by a Schema.

If you need to have multiple Schemas to make sure you can specifically link to a specified subtype, then the only option would be to use multiple Mountpoints indeed (which means different collections for each subtype).