Content Editor – New window from here

If you ever have had to create a new item, but wanted to copy a bunch of text over from a different one you have had to either:

• Copy the text, go to the new item, paste the text, save, rinse and repeat
• Open a new window of the content editor, navigate to the item, select it and copy/ paste

I figured I could make this easier by creating something like ‘New window from here’, which will just pop up a new Content Editor window opening on the item I select.

This is actually very easy to do: I’d have to create a new command for my right-mouse click and implement a bit of code.

As always, the commands can be found in the Core database. The menu for the right-click is defined in /sitecore/content/Applications/Content Editor/Context Menues/Default (No, Menues is not a typo). I’ll create my command directly underneath the Insert button as displayed below.

 

Now I need to make sure the correct command gets executed:

Notice I’m actually passing in an ID to my command as well. This is not required, but I wanted to show how to use that.
This leads to the following result when I right-click on an item:

Now to the code. First of all, I’ll create a config file which I can stick in the Include folder:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="testapplication:newwindow" type="TestApplication.NewWindowFromHere.NewWindow, TestApplication" />
    </commands>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

As always, beautifully named 😉

Next up: The NewWindow class. This class needs to inherit from the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.Command class and implement the Execute method at the very least, but the command can also be disabled if that’s required by overriding the QueryState method.

Option one, without the parameter:

public class NewWindow : Command
{
  public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
  {
    Assert.IsNotNull(context, "context");
    Assert.IsNotNull(context.Items, "items");
    if (context.Items.Length >= 1)
    {
      var parameters = new Sitecore.Text.UrlString();
      parameters.Add("id", context.Items[0].ID.ToString());
      parameters.Add("fo", context.Items[0].ID.ToString());

      Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Windows.RunApplication("Content Editor", parameters.ToString());
    }
  }
}

This code is pretty straightforward. We will build a UrlString and pass this along when we start the Content Editor. It’s worth noting  that the parameter in the Message field is not used here. In this case the Message field could simply be: testapplication:newwindow instead of testapplication:newwindow(id=$Target)

Option two, with the parameter being passed in:

public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
{
  Assert.IsNotNull(context, "context");
  Assert.IsNotNull(context.Parameters["id"], "id");

  var parameters = new Sitecore.Text.UrlString();
  parameters.Add("id", context.Parameters["id"]);
  parameters.Add("fo", context.Parameters["id"]);

  Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Windows.RunApplication("Content Editor", parameters.ToString());
}

I can get to the ID passed along in the parameters very simply, as you can see in line 4. In this case the Message field needs to be testapplication:newwindow(id=$Target), otherwise the Assert in line 4 would not pass.