Mercator 🗺

A simple and lightweight mapper for Sitecore.

You might be asking yourself, wait, another ORM for Sitecore? Why?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, I'll bite. What's so special about this one?

• it's tiny (< 8k) - just one DLL, no config files
• it uses the existing Sitecore API - no new classes or types
• I wrote it

Not compelling enough. Show me some code.

Controller

public class DemoController : Controller
{
	public ActionResult Component()
	{
		var componentViewModel = RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item.Map<ComponentViewModel>();
		componentViewModel.SomeOtherNonSitecoreContent = "Hello nurse!";
		return View(componentViewModel);
	}
}

View Model

public class ComponentViewModel
{
	// map by field name
	[SitecoreField("Title")]
	// use your friendly neighborhood Sitecore field types
	public TextField Title { get; set; }

	[SitecoreField("Description")]
	public HtmlField Description { get; set; }

	[SitecoreField("Image")]
	public ImageField Image { get; set; }

	[SitecoreField("Link")]
	public LinkField Link { get; set; }

	// or by field ID
	[SitecoreField("{ABDECD77-1C41-406C-82E1-3A9ED4050115}")]
	public CheckboxField Checkbox { get; set; }

	[SitecoreField("{0E5015AE-2D95-4500-A723-91CC723A5AE7}")]
	public LookupField Droplink { get; set; }

	// or nothing at all if it's not coming from Sitecore
	public string SomeOtherNonSitecoreContent { get; set; }
}

View

@model ComponentViewModel

<div>
	<!-- You can specify the model... -->
	<h1>@Html.Mercator().Field(Model, x => x.Title)</h1>
	<p>@Html.Mercator().Field(Model, x => x.Description)</p>

	<!-- ...or you can let it infer from the @@Model declaration -->
	@Html.Mercator().Field(x => x.Image)
	@Html.Mercator().Field(x => x.Link)
	
	<!-- MVC helpers work since the field types return simple types -->
	@Html.CheckBox("checkbox", Model.Checkbox.Checked)
	
	<!-- Normal Sitecore field types using the normal Sitecore API -->
	@Model.Droplink.TargetItem.Name
	
	<!-- This is populated from the controller, not from Sitecore -->
	<h4>@Model.SomeOtherNonSitecoreContent</h4>
</div>

What is this @Html.Mercator().Field() business? I thought you said there was no API!

It's a helper. 😀 Think of it as a wrapper for FieldRenderer.Render(). It determines the appropriate field from the [SitecoreField] attribute and calls FieldRenderer.Render() for that field. No fuss, no muss.