DD4T - what is the recommended way to configure default controllers and actions?

Question

In earlier versions of the framework, default controllers and actions were configured with

<add key="Controller" value="TridionComponent"/>
<add key="Action" value="Component"/>

as blogged by Albert Romkes

In a more recent post by Katarina Stojanovski the advice is to use the following:

<add key="DD4T.ComponentPresentationController" value="Component" />
<add key="DD4T.ComponentPresentationAction" value="ComponentModel" />

I have noticed that in DD4T.Utils.DD4TConfiguration the properties that expose these settings are marked as obsolete. It's not clear why.

So, on the basis that I'm starting a brand new DD4T application and wish to follow current good practice, how should I proceed?

Answer 1

Web.config Configuration should be:

<add key="DD4T.ComponentPresentationController" value="Component" />
<add key="DD4T.ComponentPresentationAction" value="ComponentModel" />

These values are used as a default for Controller and Action for a components, and could be overwritten by metadata on the Component Template.

For the above configuration the following controller should exist in your app:

 public class ComponentController : ModelControllerBase
    {
        public ComponentController(IPageFactory pageFactory, IComponentPresentationFactory componentPresentationFactory, ILogger logger, IDD4TConfiguration dd4tConfiguration, IViewModelFactory viewModelFactory) : base(pageFactory, componentPresentationFactory, logger, dd4tConfiguration, viewModelFactory)
        {
        }
        public override ActionResult ComponentModel()
        {
            return base.ComponentModel();
        }
    }

The controller above assumes that you're using a strongly typed viewmodels for your application, and your ViewModels are implementing IRenderableViewModel interface.

    [ContentModel("article", true)]
    public class Article : ViewModelBase, IRenderableViewModel
    {

        [TextField]
        public string Heading { get; set; }

        [RenderData]
        public IRenderData RenderData { get; set; }
    }

The logic for RenderData can be found here.