Sitecore Tactics

Sitecore on Cloud - Windows Azure and Amazon EC2

We investigated a lot of time which cloud service is better for our Sitecore architecture. It is always good to know about reliability, efficiency, scalability and agility for the cloud service we are going to use.

Here are some points I concluded while working on both of Microsoft Azure and Amazon EC2. Azure is a IaaS, while EC2 is PaaS, so surely both are having some pros and cons. Below are few points I collected while working on it.

Points	Windows Azure	Amazon EC2
Computing Category	Infrastructure as Service	Platform as Service
Guaranteed Network Availability	99.999%	99.9%
SQL Database
Database Capacity	Allows maximum 150GB size of SQL Azure database. We can then use a cloud VM for using SQL.	No limitation on size of database, as need a separate VM.
Database Backup/Restore	Many limitations in backup/restore on SQL Azure	a more mature environment for backup/restore than Azure
Load Balancers
Sticky Session Configuration	Does not support Sticky sessions, so session based functionalities will not work Still, they are paid.	- Free and allows sticky session configurations.
Multi-region load-balancing	Can not support multi-region servers.	Can not support multi-region servers, but we can use 3rd party services to handle multi-region servers
Deployment
Quick deployment	Sitecore Azure works superbly if you have valid Sitecore and Sitecore Azure versions, which makes automated deployment so easy and quick. Very easy to create multiple sitecore instances using it.	Deployment is not automated as they provides a remote console, still automated deployment is possible using WebDeploy.
Troubleshooting	It is very difficult to troubleshoot deployment problems faced using Sitecore Azure.	Manual deployment does not create any issues
Backup and Monitoring	Has some basic monitoring system	AWS
Support	Paid Support	Free Support

If you want to try and experiment cloud services, go to Windows Azure or Amazon EC2. Both of them provides free cloud services for limited time period.

Upload Sitecore media items in selected languages

One day, one idea came in my mind to create media items in specific languages only, which is very useful thought. By default, Sitecore media item gets created in many languages, where we need actually one or two out of them. Want to know why? Then read why sitecore media item gets created in multiple languages.

NOTE: This issues was recreated in Sitecore 7.2 and older versions. Sitecore 8 and later creates media items only in context language.

Specific languages for Unversioned Media Item

How it's benefitial?

In Unversioned media item, item gets created in all languages exist under /sitecore/system/languages/. Creating its version in selected languages is benefitial:

Less insert queries to DB tables, less records fetched while fetching media item details.
DataCache and ItemCache will be created in selected languages only instead of all languages.
Reduced Database size, where millions of media are stored.
So, overall performance improvement while uploading media item and while using/fetching media item.

How to achieve it?

Create your custom class inherited from the Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreator one, say SitecoreTactics.Resources.Media.MediaCreator. In this class you should override CreateItem method to retrieve there the set of the languages from the web.config setting. This set should be used as the languageArray in the foreach cycle. Thus the unversioned mediaitem with certain language versions will be created.

See how it looks:
```
namespace SitecoreTactics.Resources.Media
{
 using System.Reflection;
 public class MediaCreator : Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreator
 {
  protected override Item CreateItem(string itemPath, string filePath, MediaCreatorOptions options)
  {
   // Override the CreateItem function method and write custom code to create selected language versions
  }
  }
}
```

Create your custom class inherited from Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaProvider one. In the constructor of this class you should assign an instance of our custom MediaCreator class (from Step#1) to the MediaProvider "creator" private field using the Reflection. So, the MediaProvider will use our own code of MediaCreator.

How the code looks:

 namespace SitecoreTactics.Resources.Media
 {
  using System.Reflection;
  public class MediaProvider : Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaProvider
  {
   public MediaProvider() : base()
   {
    typeof(Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaProvider).GetField("creator", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).SetValue(this, new SitecoreTactics.Resources.Media.MediaCreator());
   }
  }
 }

Change in config, register our custom mediaprovider class as below:

<mediaLibrary>
    ...
    <mediaProvider type="SitecoreTactics.Resources.Media.CustomMediaProvider,SitecoreTactics.Resources" />
    ...
</mediaLibrary>

Wow, it worked well!

Specific languages for Versioned Media Item

Versioned Media Item does not need an automated way to upload media in selected languages. The reason is, this kind of media does not share Media File. So, it is used only when we need to upload different files for different languages of same media item. If still someone need to achieve it, here is the way:

Add a settings in the web.config file containing set of the pipe separated needed languages. For example:
```
<setting name="SetOfLanguages" value="en|ru-RU|en-GB" />
```
Add an extra checkbox "Versionable For Certain Languages" on the Media Folder Upload Form using this file: \Website\sitecore\shell\Applications\Media\MediaFolder\MediaFolder.xml
Create a custom class inherited from Sitecore.Pipelines.Upload.UploadArgs and add here an extra "SpecialVersioned" property. This property will indicate to Sitecore.Pipelines.Upload.Save processor to execute the custom actions.
Create a custom class based on Sitecore.Shell.Applications.FlashUpload.Advanced.UploadTarget one and define it in \Website\sitecore\shell\Applications\FlashUpload\Advanced\UploadTarget.aspx file instead of the default one.
In this class you should assign a value to your custom UploadArgs.SpecialVersioned property similar to the UploadArgs.Versioned one.
Create your custom class based on the Sitecore.Pipelines.Upload.Save one and register it in the web.config <uiUpload> pipeline instead of the default one.

An example of its rewritten Process method is here: Expand Code

public void Process(Sitecore.Support.Pipelines.Upload.UploadArgs args)
{
 Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
 for (int i = 0; i < args.Files.Count; i++)
 {
  HttpPostedFile file = args.Files[i];
  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(file.FileName))
  {
   try
   {
    bool flag = UploadProcessor.IsUnpack(args, file);
    if (args.FileOnly)
    {
     if (flag)
     {
      UnpackToFile(args, file);
     }
     else
     {
      string str = this.UploadToFile(args, file);
      if (i == 0)
      {
       args.Properties["filename"] = str;
      }
     }
    }
    else
    {
     MediaUploader uploader2 = new MediaUploader
     {
      File = file,
      Unpack = flag,
      Folder = args.Folder,
      Versioned = args.Versioned,
      Language = args.Language,
      AlternateText = args.GetFileParameter(file.FileName, "alt"),
      Overwrite = args.Overwrite,
      FileBased = args.Destination == UploadDestination.File
     };
     if (args.SpecialVersioned)
     {
      uploader2.Versioned = true;
     }
     List<MediaUploadResult> list = uploader2.Upload();
     Log.Audit(this, "Upload: {0}", new string[] { file.FileName });
     if (args.SpecialVersioned)
     {
      string[] setOfLanguages = MainUtil.RemoveEmptyStrings(Settings.GetSetting("SetOfLanguages", "en").ToLowerInvariant().Split(new char[] { '|' }));
      var languagesForProcessing = new List<Globalization.Language>();
      foreach (var language in setOfLanguages)
      {
       var lang = Globalization.Language.Parse(language);
       languagesForProcessing.Add(lang);
      }
      foreach (MediaUploadResult result in list)
      {
       foreach (var language in languagesForProcessing)
       {
        Item langItem = result.Item.Database.GetItem(result.Item.ID, language);
        if (langItem.Versions.Count < 1)
        {
         langItem = langItem.Versions.AddVersion();
         var mediaItem = new MediaItem(langItem);
         using (new EditContext(mediaItem, SecurityCheck.Disable))
         {
          mediaItem.InnerItem["extension"] = FileUtil.GetExtension(file.FileName);
         }
         Media media = MediaManager.GetMedia(mediaItem);
         Assert.IsNotNull(media, typeof(Sitecore.Resources.Media.Media));
         media.SetStream(file.InputStream, FileUtil.GetExtension(file.FileName));
        }
       }
      }
     }
     foreach (MediaUploadResult result in list)
     {
      this.ProcessItem(args, result.Item, result.Path);
     }
    }
   }
   catch (Exception exception)
   {
    Log.Error("Could not save posted file: " + file.FileName, exception, this);
    throw;
   }
  }
 }
}

It's working great, isn't it?
And yes, many thanks to Yuriy Zakharov from Sitecore Support to provide such a nice solution!!

Sitecore Custom HTTP Handlers

We recently had a requirement that we need thumbnail for PDFs stored in Sitecore, so whenever we need to find PDFs or other media files, we can find out them by its thumbnail. In starting we thought to create a thumbnail for each media file and then store it to another location in Sitecore tree itself while uploading media. It was a good idea, but the problem in this approach would come when a user updates the media? We need to create thumbnail again... Same thing when user deletes/moves/publishes, etc. it needed to generate thumbnail all the time.

Finally we came to a perfect solution of using Custom HTTP Handler, using which we can fulfill this requirement easily.

Overview of Sitecore Custom Handlers?

Search for in your web.config. These are the custom handlers called by Sitecore to serve requests of media, xaml, icon, feed, etc. See below block in web.config:

    
      <handler handler="sitecore_media.ashx" trigger="~/media/" />
      <handler handler="sitecore_api.ashx" trigger="~/api/" />
      <handler handler="sitecore_xaml.ashx" trigger="~/xaml/" />
      <handler handler="sitecore_icon.ashx" trigger="~/icon/" />
      <handler handler="sitecore_feed.ashx" trigger="~/feed/" />

Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.CustomHandlers processor from httpBeginRequest dispatches requests to specialized handlers that are required. These handlers are defined in web.config under configuration/sitecore/customHandlers.

If the current request ends with the a handler’s file (e.g., sitecore_media.ashx), then Sitecore aborts the current pipeline, since this request is specifically targeting a handler directly, which are defined in system.webServer/handlers section as below, which shows that the media request will be served through Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaRequestHandler. See below block of web.config:

   <handlers>
      <add name="Sitecore.MediaRequestHandler" path="sitecore_media.ashx"  type="Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaRequestHandler, Sitecore.Kernel" verb="*" />
   </handlers>

Create own Sitecore Custom Handlers to generate thumbnails of media items

Now, we created a new custom handler for creating thumbnail and registered in handlers as below:

    
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>

    <!-- Define Custom Handler -->
    <customHandlers>
      <handler trigger="~/mediathumb/" handler="sitecore_media_thumb.ashx"  />
    </customHandlers>

    <!-- Define Media Prefix -->
    <mediaLibrary>
      <mediaPrefixes>
        <prefix value="~/mediathumb" />
      </mediaPrefixes>
    </mediaLibrary>
  </sitecore>


  <!-- Define Web Handler -->
  <system.webServer>
 <handlers>
     <add verb="*" path="sitecore_media_thumb.ashx" type="SitecoreTactics.ThumbnailManager.PDFThumbnailRequestHandler, SitecoreTactics.ThumbnailManager" name="SitecoreTactics.PDFThumbnailRequestHandler"/>
 </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

This class will create a thumbnail of the request PDF on-the-fly using GhostScript. We will save this thumbnail as Media Cache, so on the next request, the thumbnail will not be created, but will be served from Media Cache itself, same as Sitecore serves media items.

In this case suppose, the PDF we uploaded has URL:
http://mydomain.com/~/media/files/Docs/mypdf.pdf.
Now, we can get its thumbnail as JPG file using URL, which will be served by our new handler because it contains /~/mediathumb trigger.
http://mydomain.com/~/mediathumb/files/Docs/mypdf.jpg.

Finally, we do not need to take care if media item is moved, deleted, published or updated. I will attach its source code very soon.... :)

What else we can do using Custom Handlers?

- In above approach, we can also generate thumbnail of different size, dimensions passed through querystring, same way Sitecore provides it for images. Read how we can Resize Sitecore Media Images on the fly.
- Even Custom Handlers can be useful to serve different kind of resources like creating sitemap (/~/sitemap/), RSS for page or its children (/~/rss/), stylesheets (/~/css/), javascripts (/~/js/), etc.

Related Posts:
- PDF Thumbnail Handler
- Show PDF Thumbnail Icons in Content Editor

Sitecore media url - remove ashx extension

Have you ever marked all your media items are rendered in our page output as .ashx extension? By default, Sitecore renders all media files or images (.jpg, .gif, .pdf, .xls, etc.) as .ashx extension.

The same thing you will find while getting mediaurl for your media items.

You can render media with its own extension using Media.RequestExtension setting in web.config.
It defines the extension to use in media request URLs. It's default its value is ashx, so all media url are .ashx.
So, media's URL will be: http://mydomain.com/~/media/Images/Banner/image.ashx

<setting name="Media.RequestExtension" value="" />

Setting its value to blank will render media url with relevant extension. Now, all your media items will be rendered in page output with its valid extension like, http://mydomain.com/~/media/Images/Banner/image.jpg
Still, your existing URL http://mydomain.com/~/media/Images/Banner/image.ashx will also work.

Image url can have different querystring parameters. Read more for Image Control and QueryString parameters.

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