Splash Page

I had an interesting query today. The query was for the possibility to have a Splash Page while the website was not announced. The functionality will be to either only redirect the Homepage to the Splash page so the http://mydomain.com will go to the SPlash Page. This would allow a content author to get the rest of the site reviewed for content and get it ready for go live. The second part of the functionality would be to hide the entire content behind the Splash Page until go live.

So here is the approach: we will use the HttpRequestBegin Pipeline to intercept the request and check on if the Splash Page is Enable and is it for the entire Site...

1 Starting with our Pipeline action

First you want to avoid applying the action to certain page and site. If the current Site is not your website then exit the action. In a similar matter, you do not want to execute the action if your request is the Splash page or you will end up with an infinite loop.

            if (Context.Item.TemplateID.ToGuid() == new Guid(TemplateIds.Pages.SplashPage))
                return;

            if (Context.Site.Name.ToLower() != Settings.GetSetting(SitecoreSettings.SiteName).ToLower())
                return;

Next, you want to resolve your homepage, site root... By the way for this exercise, the Splash Page Settings are defined in the Root Item...

            string rootPath = Context.Site.RootPath;
            var rootItem = Context.Database.GetItem(rootPath);
            if (rootItem == null)
                return;

            string homePath = string.Format("{0}/{1}", Context.Site.RootPath, Context.Site.StartItem);
            var homepage = Context.Database.GetItem(homePath);
            if (homepage == null)
                return;

Then, once you have the root item let's get the properties for the Splash Page: Enable, Splash Page Target, Enable for Entire Site

            string enableSplashPage = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.EnableSplashPage];
            string enableSplashPageEntireSite = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.EnableForEntireSite];
            string splashPage = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.PageLink];

Then the rest is quite simple:

namespace MyProject.Business.Sitecore.Pipelines
{
    /// 

    /// This processor will check if the current item has a Redirect field and setup correctly
    /// Redirect the user to the redirect link setup...
    /// 
    public class SplashPageRedirect : HttpRequestProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(HttpRequestArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (Context.Item == null || Context.Database == null || args.Url.ItemPath.Length == 0 || Context.Site == null)
                return;

            if (Context.Item.TemplateID.ToGuid() == new Guid(TemplateIds.Pages.SplashPage))
                return;

            if (Context.Site.Name.ToLower() != Settings.GetSetting(SitecoreSettings.SiteName).ToLower())
                return;

            string rootPath = Context.Site.RootPath;
            var rootItem = Context.Database.GetItem(rootPath);
            if (rootItem == null)
                return;

            string homePath = string.Format("{0}/{1}", Context.Site.RootPath, Context.Site.StartItem);
            var homepage = Context.Database.GetItem(homePath);
            if (homepage == null)
                return;

            Profiler.StartOperation("Resolve splash page Redirect item.");

            string enableSplashPage = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.EnableSplashPage];
            string enableSplashPageEntireSite = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.EnableForEntireSite];
            string splashPage = rootItem[FieldIds.Base.SplashPage.PageLink];

            if (enableSplashPage != "1")
            {
                Profiler.EndOperation();
                return;
            }

            if (!SC.Data.ID.IsID(splashPage))
            {
                Profiler.EndOperation();
                return;
            }

            if (homepage.ID.Guid == Context.Item.ID.Guid || enableSplashPageEntireSite == "1")
            {
                var newItem = Context.Database.GetItem(new SC.Data.ID(splashPage));
                if (newItem == null)
                {
                    Profiler.EndOperation();
                    return;
                }

                Context.Item = newItem;
                Profiler.EndOperation();
                return;
            }
        }
    }
}

Now we have our Pipeline action, lets hook it up with the configuration file:

      < httprequestbegin>
        < processor patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver, Sitecore.Kernel']" type="MyProject.Business.Sitecore.Pipelines.SplashPageRedirect, MyProject.Business" />
      < /httprequestbegin>

Finally, just to give the idea of the fields on the Root Item: