Item Creator

The Item Creator module enables you to create item-based pages or paragraphs from frontend, based on one of your item types.

Since item types are very flexible content templates, this means that you can use the item creator for almost any scenario you can imagine, involving user input.

For instance, you can use the Item Creator module to:

• Allow users (or some user groups) to create blog posts – or newsletters
• Submit and react on contact forms of all kinds
• Enable editors to create and maintain calendar events
• Etc.

In principle, the list of things you can do with the Item Creator is limited only by your imagination – and your budget, of course, blast it.

The Item Publisher module is only a small part of working with items in Dynamicweb. You should familiarize yourself with items in general, before reading this section.

Before using the item publisher module, you need to have one or more item types created and configured. Read about item types. 

In this section you will learn about:

• Adding the Item Creator module to a paragraph
• Selecting which item type to create, and where to create it
• Using the Item Creator module to submit forms

To get started with the Item Creator, add the module to a paragraph on a page. Read about adding modules to a paragraph.

From the paragraph, you have access to the module settings window (Figure 3.1).

From here, you can control the behavior of this instance of the module - or remove it altogether.

Here’s a rundown of the settings and what they do.

Figure 3.1 The module settings window

We strongly discourage you from creating new sites using stylesheets, Javascript, or the theme-functionality. This is old technology, and is supported for legacy reasons.

The Item Creator data settings control how the module works with the data provided by you and by your users.

Figure 4.1 The Item Creator data settings

You must:

• Select a target page for the created items. Pages are created as subpages to the target page, paragraphs are created on the selected page, and item list items are created on the Page Properties > Advanced – Item lists for the selected page. This setting selectd the page with the module attached by default.
• Select a content structure for the module – i.e. decide if you want to create pages, paragraphs, or items in a named item list.
• Select the item type the module should use as a template for item creation.
  • Only items which match the content structure selected are available for selection. Read about item types and content structure restrictions here.
  • If your content structure is named item list, you can choose any named item list which have been added to Item lists under Page Properties for the selected target page. Read more about named item lists here.
  • If your content structure is paragraph, you have the option of selecting a content placeholder, in addition to an item type. Read about content placeholders.
• Select the publish state for a newly created item – published, unpublished or hidden.
• Decide if the new item should be added first or last on creation.

Specify a confirmation page, if you want the user to be redirected to a page after an item is created. If blank, the user is returned to the current page (where the module is located)

You can select or customize a template to use on the frontend (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Item Creator Templates settings

The Create-template is placed in /Files/Templates/ItemCreator/Create/

Many people use the Item Creator to work with forms – and need an easy way to send receipts and form data by email. The form save events settings (Figure 6.1) are dedicated to that scenarios.

Figure 6.1 Form save events settings

If you want to send a receipt by mail, or send form data to someone by mail, check the form save events boxes.

This folds out the email settings (Figure 6.2), where you can customize the email behavior of the module.

Figure 6.2 If you want to send a receipt via email, check the appropriate box, and fill out these settings

You can:

• Provide a sender name and email – or use the value from one of your item fields
• Provide a recipient email – or use the value from one of your item fields
• Provide a recipient CC and BCC email – or use the value from one of your item fields
• Provide a subject – or use the value from one of your item fields
• Select a template to use when rendering the email
• Select your encoding
• Enable logging, if you want to save a mail system log and a copy of the sent email. Logs and copies can be found in the /Files/MailLog folder

There is no implementing specific information for this subject.

There is no developing specific information for this subject.

There is no database specific information for this subject.

There is no integration specific information for this subject.