How XSLT macro can be used inside an umbraco richtext editor

I’ve been trying to make a simple XSLT macro, that can be used from the macro dropdown in Umbraco rich text editor. And this has proved somewhat more interesting that i have anticipated.

Making macroes in Umbraco is pretty simple and strait forward, just go under Development in Seactions and right click “XSLT files” folder in the tree menu. Choose create from the menu and type in the name of the XSLT, press ok and you are in business. If you haven’t unchecked Create macro, you’ll find your macro in the “Macros” folder, under the same name as your XSLT. Easy as eating pancakes right.. (c:

So her’s where the fun begins ,.. to make this usable from the reachtext editor, you must check the “Use in editor” chekerbox under “macro properties” tab. This is the easy setup part.

You can use your XSLT macro as it is in your .Net code by calling it like this

<umbraco:Item field="macroNameHere" runat="server"></umbraco:Item>

but here is the dangerous bit,.. If you are reading it in through XSLT,  from your richtext field,  like this

<xsl:value-of select="$currentPage/data[@alias = 'bodyText']" />

the Macro will never be rendered and the only thing you will get is this bit of code rendered as common text, Bummer )c:

<?UMBRACO_MACRO  macroAlias="macroNameHere" />

Now befour you will start tearing hair from your head, this is what you could do,.. (c:

<xsl:variable name="content" select="$currentPage/data[@alias='bodyText']"/>
<xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:RenderMacroContent($content, $currentPage/@id)" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>

By using the RenderMacroContent you are forcing umbraco to render your macro which is allready represented by its tag in the reachtext field.

another apprach is to use the folowing code snipped witch will enchure to render our XSLT Macro automatically

<xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:Item($currentPage/@id,'bodytext')" />

It’s less code compared to the other method, and as another small bonus the Item-extension makes sure that you can edit the content i canvas-mode as well. That option is normally not possible when rendering the content through XSLT  (c:

happy days,..