Customizing binary paths in DD4T

Tridion has a rather particular way to deal with so-called binary files (images, PDFs, Word documents etc). When published, these files are placed in one folder (typically called ‘images’). To avoid conflicts between different binaries with the same file name, a unique ID is appended to the name of the file. A typical URL of a published binary file would be something like http://mysite.com/images/my-image_tcm3-123.png.

But what if you want to make your own rules for binary paths? And what if you are using the DD4T framework as well? In this post I will explain how to customize the paths to your binaries in DD4T.

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Using SDL’s microservices in a web farm

SDL Web 8 has been around for a little over a year now. Its successor (SDL Web 8.5) was recently introduced. You’d think that to an old Tridion hand like me, by now Web 8.x would be as familiar as any of the earlier (Tridion) versions. The sobering fact is that today I ran into an issue caused by a poor understanding on my side of SDL’s new microservices architecture. Fortunately it proved easy to fix.

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Going polymorph with ViewModels in DD4T Java 2.0

Plato (~423 BC – ~347 BC) was a pretty smart guy. Among his many ideas and thoughts, his Theory of Forms had an immense influence on how we perceive and solve the philosophical Problem of universals. It basically comes down to the idea that every physical object has one or more essences (or Forms) and that if that object would not have that Form, it would not be that object: a dog is Mammal, but a giraffe is also a Mammal. What makes both animals Mammals? It’s, simply put, the Idea of the Mammal.

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