Are there any sources of good study materials for SDL Tridion 2011 templating?

Question

I have been working in SDL Tridion 2011 writing C# Template Building Blogs and Dream Weaver Templates.

So far, everything I have learned has been either with help from more senior developers OR by looking through existing code already in use. I have not had the chance to dig in deep on things like : "engine", engine.GetObject(). ( and a long list of other items related to Tridion Templating!)

Are there any good study material for creating C# TBBs/DWTs similar to the famous books on .net by Wrox professionals?

I am looking for the complete details on all methods, Conditional loops, Syntax, variable creations in the C# TBBs and DWTs.

Answer 1

Coming from a mixed content delivery (ASP.NET) and business analyst background, I've been interested in the same type of resources. I've typically followed the Tridion community, asked questions, and shared what I've learned.

Here are some posts I've shared along with my favorite public sources that explain approaches and include much appreciated context for Tridion templating.

Modular Templating

• Overview. The "classic" Different Levels of Templating (2 articles available) article gives an overview, context, and code.
• Examples. The default templates have plenty of interesting examples, but also the SDL Tridion World Extensions have a few.
• Formatting Practices. Will Price also describes ways to make HTML "play nice" with Tridion templating.

More on DWT

• Quick Start. I made a video on how to quickly start a layout template building block.
• Subtle Points. The Tridion Cookbook describes additional DWT functions (including CollectionLength) and I've asked about other DWT constants.
• Approaches. Standard approaches are to base loops on embedded schemas or to partition and arrange markup (into columns for example).

More on C#

• Quick Start. I have a simple "get started" setup guide.
• More Context. I also asked about the difference between C# fragments and assembly and Nuno Linhares answered a question on detecting your template context.
• Simplify Syntax. Nuno also explains easier ways to read DWT syntax in C#, bridging the way to get fields on both sides.

Yet Even More Examples

Within the last year or so, Mihai Cădariu, has shared a variety of Tridion templating examples. Definitely check out his "Yet Another" Tridion Blog (links to posts labelled templating). Specifically for your point on the engine, see his post, "Messing with the Engine."

Answer 2

The Tridion practice project is explicitly aimed at gathering together good examples of different areas of Tridion practice. In the cookbook section, there's an entire "chapter" about compound templating. Maybe this can become an even better resource if more people are aware of it and help with their own contributions. (It's Free... under an MIT license.)

Of course, it's not the only community resource addressing this area, but most of the rest are blogs and the like. As Nuno hinted, you can go a long way with Google.

Answer 3

Well... if Tridion had the resources (and following) of Microsoft, I'm sure you would have such books. Since Tridion/SDL doesn't have those resources, we have to be creative and (maybe) write one ourselves.

The best start is probably to go through the CHMs (available for download here - login required), not everything is fully documented but it is improving every release.

As far as I know, there are no publicly available resources other than the ones you can find through Google. Pretty sure many organizations have internal tutorials and internal training documentation portals, but due to the commercial nature of those organizations these resources are not accessible to us from the outside.

Answer 4

I am going to make my answer a little broader than DWTs/c# TBBs and instead address the wider availability of study materials for Tridion 2011.

As Nuno mentioned, there are not any books like the Wrox Professional series of books on .net for SDL Tridion.

However, in addition to the documentation on SDL Live Content Nunos has linked to in his answer, there are a number of other types of reference sources where you can pick up a good bit of knowledge on the inner workings of Tridion especially if you are willing to dive into a little bit of other people’s code.

First, I would suggest taking a look at the many community created blogs listed in the question List of SDL Tridion References as many of the postings on those blogs go into specific issues the authors have encountered in the course of their day to day work with Tridion and how to solve the issues.

Additionally I would suggest taking a look at the source code for the Tridion 2011 power tools project found at http://code.google.com/p/tridion-2011-power-tools/, the source code for the Dynamic Delivery 4 Tridion project found at http://code.google.com/p/dynamic-delivery-4-tridion/ and the Razor Mediator for Tridion project found at http://code.google.com/p/razor-mediator-4-tridion/ .

They all provide a fair amount of insight into how to use different parts of the Tridion stack such as core services and the tom.net API.