DXA - Retrieving Raw Component Content

Question

Is there a way to return the raw content of a component minus its presentation using an out of the box (DXA or CMS/CDS) capability? Preferably, no additional (back end or server-side) development would be required.

I also understand that you can append the querystring variable, "format=json", at the end of a request but it only returns the data model and not the content itself.

Answer 1

DXA is a web Application, so component presentations are rendered as output and it serves the desired purpose. But, what you are looking for is a sort of Rest API which responds with content data.

You can achieve using either of the following options,

1. You can use the oData webservice available with Tridion 2013 to query explicitly for the component content. Example - http://tridion.sdldemo.com:8081/odata.svc/Components(ItemId=3768,PublicationId=67)
2. Download and use the NuGet package DD4T Rest API in the DXA web App
3. Implement a custom Model builder and register it in the DXA webApp where you have full access to component content, so you can expose only the component content for your needs.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

If I understand your question correctly, you are trying to render the content of a component presentation. No OOTB APIs are available, to my knowledge. You can write a custom controller to which you need to parse the component ID and the component presentation ID to produce the output as a string.

You can take a look at the below answer by Rick for rendering a dynamic component presentation as a string.