How publishing works for ECL Items when published alone or published as Multimedia Link

Question

Trying to explore more on Tridion, found that ECL External Content Library framework bit interesting.

Started implementing the same in Tridion CME with the help of a few tutorial and blogs, which help me to achieve some extent.

Based on Bart Koopman Flickr ECL Provider and few modifications from my end, configured an ECL Provider. Now able to get external content Folders, Files as ECL Items, mapped ECL Items External Metadata to Stub Component through Event Extensions everything going well up to here.

Now I wanted to use ECL Items as Multimedia Link in other existing Components, and publish the Component so that the ECL Item content needs to be deployed to the file system.

Based on Bart Koopman comment generated Default Templates and TBBs and included Resolve ECL items V2. Do ECL Items require any Component Templates for publishing?

1. Yes, What all TBB's need to be placed in ECL Item CT.
2. No, To Publish ECL Items when it is used as Multimedia Link, Resolve ECL items V2 alone sufficient to existing CT to place content in the File System?

Answer 1

Your question is not more clear what you want to achieve,

Also, I'm not sure whether you are using DXA or web farm implementation.

I will explain based on my understanding and previous implementations with ECL Youtube and Vimeo, It will same apply to Flicker ECL integration as Remote Reference URL not stored in Local.

Part of your CT - TBB - yes need to add Resolve ECL items V2 TBB also.

ASP.NET Web farm-based implementation before publishing the page to filesystem you need to resolve your ECL items at publishing time, to render the image tag with source path as Flicker external Image URL.

Eg:
       <img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4720/39540548284_d22e2a7fc1_b.jpg" />

Based on your choice of templating DWT or Razor using the built-in functions IFunctionSource

DWT:
    @@GetExternalContentLibraryDirectLink("tcm:5-345")@@

Razor:

 @
{
    var ecl = new Tridion.ExternalContentLibrary.Templating.V2.ExternalContentLibraryFunctionSource();
    ecl.Initialize(TridionHelper.Engine, TridionHelper.Package);
    string url = ecl.GetExternalContentLibraryDirectLink("tcm:5-345");
}

Alternatively, you can also use this function GetExternalContentLibraryHtmlFragment

DXA ECL Implementation: once we add the Resolve ECL items V2 to TBB and publish the page and PageSettings page.

you need to create the DXA-model to achieve this on presentation side.

Refer to the DXA MediaManager module to create one for same for Flicker.

Model ECLImage.cs:

    [SemanticEntity(CoreVocabulary, "ExternalContentLibraryStubSchema-flickr")]
    [Serializable]
    public class ECLImage : EclItem

View ECLImage.cshtml:

@model ECLImage
@Html.Media(Model)

Register your Viewmodel in the Area:

RegisterViewModel("ECLImage", typeof(ECLImage));

DXA Page JSON output for your reference:

I hope it helps you to understand.