DXA 1.5 TBBs do not output Multimedia Component Field - External Url, recursively

Question

I am not sure where to log this as a defect, maybe? But when using DXA 1.5 TBBs:

• Generate dynamic component
• Generate dynamic page

it recursively outputs json, which is really great, but it does not output an external url from a multimedia Component. Below Screenshot.

I can create an independent TBB to do so. Parse and get the MM Component, load it find the external url, and append the url to Json. But with keeping DXA and utilizing these TBBs out of the box, I would consider this would be expected functionality?

Answer 1

DXA follows the behavior that SDL Web (or Tridion if you will) delivers, when using an External URL in a Multimedia Component, at Publish time, the content of the External URL is fetched and published as a binary. So while this might not be what you expected or wanted, this is considered correct behavior at this time.

The idea behind this is that the External URL would only be accessible from the CMS, and might not be accessible from the presentation server or the web for that matter.

To use external URLs directly, you will indeed have to modify the DXA out-of-the-box TBBs and modify this behaviour. Or you might opt to create an ECL provider for these external assets, and use them that way. ECL is designed to have the option of using external URLs on the presentation side (like for example Media Manager or the Flickr provider I created a while ago).