Sitecore 7.2 MVC, Personalisation issue with WFFM

Not long ago, I faced an issue when using personalization. It is usually straight forward to setup but somehow this time it did not work. This was quite annoying and get me going for a bit of time. So I wanted to share it in case anybody out there would faced the same issue.

So for the project we were using:

• Sitecore 7.2 MVC, 
• GlassMapper
• WFFM for all the forms on the website. 

As you can imagine most of the presentation elements were View renderings, except a few controller renderings. When setting up the personalisation rules, everything seems to be working perfectly at first until the testing team reported an issue:

When personalisation rules were set on an item, none of them was triggered. Looked like the rules engine was not working correctly. 

After investigating the issue it seems like it was only when personalisation was applied on Controller rendering. After trying the rule engine on a fresh Sitecore install, everything was working perfectly. So I started to take out our customisation elements one by one. After commenting all pipeline actions I could think of having anything to do with the issue and no luck, the issue was still there. Until "light bulb": let's check the Showconfig.aspx page:

And there you go, the pipeline action where the rule engine is triggered is the "CustomizeRendering" from the Sitecore.Mvc.Analytics.config

As you can see from the pipeline, One processor is intercepting the GetRenderer before it was hitting the rules engine. The pipeline action is from the Sitecore.Forms.MVC.config file. Looking at the code in this processor you will see the following:

if (args.Rendering.RenderingItem.ID != IDs.FormMvcInterpreterID)
{
    return base.GetRenderer(rendering, args);
}
Tuple< string, string> controllerAndAction = this.GetControllerAndAction(rendering, args);
if (controllerAndAction == null)
{
    return null;
} 

This will obviously intercept the Controller rendering and return the Conntroller and action prior evaluating the Rules...

If you are looking at the configuration file: Sitecore.Forms.MVC.config then you will realized that the intend is to place this processor before the GetControllerRenderer to ensure that the form controller will be executed before a normal ControllerRenderer:

When Sitecore is parsing the Configuration files the Sitecore.MVC.Analytics.config is parsed after the Sitecore.Forms.MVC.config... Which means that the GetFormControllerRenderer will get executed before the Rule engine...

Solution:
rename the config file to be "t_Sitecore.Forms.MVC.config". This will ensure that the processor will happen after the rules engine kicks in:

WFFM custom field with Placeholder

Here is a simple entry on this blog, but I wanted to add it here to show how simple it is to create or extend fields in WFFM.

On a recent project we ad this form where the text fields did not have labels. Instead, the text was placed on the TextBox. Basically something like the below image:

Obviously you could add it as Default Value and get some JS to clear the field on focus... But a nicer way to do this is to ensure the text is placed on the placeholder attribute:

< input class="scfSingleLineTextBox" id="uc_2_form_ED630308419A4EB9A4D237E767A70A2A_field_D553FA1A5DF1403BA2A732D45CD4298D" maxlength="256" name="uc_2$form_ED630308419A4EB9A4D237E767A70A2A$field_D553FA1A5DF1403BA2A732D45CD4298D" placeholder="First Name" type="text" />

If you go into the form editor in sitecore, unfortunately you will not have the placeholder attribute on the default fields: Single Line, Email...

So, lets create a custom field:

1- Create an item in Sitecore for your custom Field

2- Create a class on your project as per the following

using Oakton.Business.Interfaces.Wffm;
using Sitecore.Form.Core.Attributes;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Web.UI;
using ScWffm = Sitecore.Form;

namespace MyProject.Sitecore.Wffm
{
    [ValidationProperty("Text")]
    public class SingleLineText : ScWffm.Web.UI.Controls.SingleLineText, IPlaceholderField
    {
        [VisualCategory("Custom Properties")]
        [VisualProperty("Placeholder Text", 2)]
        [DefaultValue("")]
        public string PlaceholderText { get; set; }

        protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
        {
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(PlaceholderText))
            {
                textbox.Attributes["placeholder"] = PlaceholderText;
            }

            base.OnInit(e);
        }
    }
}

From the above code, you can see that the class will inherit from the SingleLineText and extend it to include a PlaceholderText Property. This property will be visible on the WFFM edit form. Then render as placeholder attribute on the frontend...

When editing the form you will now be able to select the new field:

Then you will see the new property on the left hand side:

 Don't forget to publish the fields and form and there you have a custom field in WFFM...