JCR extends

This page explains how you can reuse JCR based configuration of Magnolia definition items with the extends mechanism.

The JCR extends mechanism is based on JCR nodes and properties. JCR configuration data can be extended on any node level, and thus on any level of configuration. JCR extends allow to extend sub items of a JCR-defined item definition.

Overview

You can extend a JCR configuration by defining an extends property and setting its value to the source configuration you want it to inherit. The target configuration inherits everything from the source and adds its own exceptions. This can save time and effort as you only need to define exceptions explicitly. Use extends & override to exclude sub-nodes of the extended node.

The mechanism is only available in the config repository.

In the example below, the sportstation site definition extends the travelsite definition. 

The definition inherits all configuration from the default configuration and adds its own domains, internationalization and URI-to-repository mappings. The extends property can point to the source configuration with an absolute or relative path. The nodes 

Examples

Generic tabs in dialogs

You can use Magnolia's extends mechanism to minimize configuration. For example, if you have a number of components that include an image, you can configure a generic image tab and use it by extension in all relevant dialogs.

This example configuration shows the use of a generic imageTab in a TextImage dialog.

Property:

Extending JCR node based template definitions

You can configure one template in full and create as many extensions with slight differences as you like. The mechanism is used to minimize configuration. Only changes, exceptions and additions are configured in the extended configuration. All other configurations are taken from the original configuration.

The extends property has two possible values:

• </path to extended template>: Used to reference the template that is extended.
• override: Used to override a portion or part of the configuration that is extended.

In the example below page-template-2 extends page-template-1. The extended template uses the full configuration of the template it extends except the configurations in the extended template.