Custom Resolver versus AddBinary()

Question

The Publisher Service includes the following processing states:

• In Progress
• Resolving
• Rendering
• Ready for Transport

Do both the standard resolvers and Custom Resolvers occur in Resolving? It looks like we can add as many Custom Resolvers as desired for different item types after the defaults in Tridion.ContentManager.config.

And does Rendering include all CM-side template code including calls to AddBinary()?

When queuing for publishing, Show Items to Publish shows a list of resolved items. Does this include all (custom) resolving at this point?

I'm trying to confirm is if Resolving take precedence over items added to the package (e.g. with AddBinary()). In other words, which wins if a Custom Resolver removes an Multimedia Component while AddBinary() includes it?

Answer 1

All resolving will occur before any rendering (as you have to resolve everything in order to know what to render) and, yes, I believe that "Show Items to Publish" includes items resolved by custom resolvers.

So, essentially, publishing items explicitly at render time will always supersede any action taking during the "resolving" phase.

In your scenario, you exclude the Multimedia Component when resolving the items to publish but then publish it anyway when your templates are rendered.

Answer 2

I want to add one point here to the @Ant's answer:

"Show items to Publish" indeed does show items from all resolvers, including custom ones DEPLOYED on the CMS Server

If you have CMS and Publisher on different servers, then you must deploy the same versions of the custom deployers with the same configurations.

The reason is, to show resolved items in GUI; TCMHost service calls the resolvers(on CMS server). And while publishing, the resolvers are called by Publisher Service on publisher server.

So the custom resolvers needs to be in sync, else the results in "Show items to Publish" and actual publishing could be different.