Suggestion: Render Macro --> Render Partial

[hfloyd]

With the conversation around deprecation of macros in Umbraco 13, I was thinking that it might make sense for there to be a "Render Partial" property editor which would operate similarly to the Render Macro editor.

It could take a relative path to a PV file, and config data could be passed in via ViewData Key/Value pairs. Your standard values could automatically be included in that ViewData as well:

• "__propertyAlias" will be populated with the property's alias.
• "__propertyLabel" will be populated with the property's label (name).
• "__propertyCulture" will be populated with the currently selected culture.
• "__propertyDataTypeKey" will be populated with the Data Type's GUID value.
• "__propertyDescription" will be populated with the property's description.
• "__propertyHideLabel" will be the flag of whether the property's label is hidden or not.

[leekelleher]

Thanks @hfloyd, good suggestion! 👍

I think I missed a discussion about Macros being deprecated in v13. 😬

[hfloyd]

Maybe it hasn't been officially announced yet... but as you know there have been conversations about "what to do about macros" for years now... and I think there is a general feeling that they aren't being used as much.

[hfloyd]

I was just thinking about this again today. I use "back-office only" macros on a few projects and thinking ahead to their next upgrades (v17 LTS), I'd hate to lose the functionality just because macros are gone.

This morning I had a new idea - rather than using a Key/Value list for the parameters, perhaps it could be configured with a link to a Document Type, sort of like how Blocks in the RTE work. This would substitute a nice UI of a "property form" like the current "Render Macro" functionality uses the UI of macro parameters.

So, to configure, a Doctype would be specified (for the params) and a path to the partial view for rendering. I still think your set of standard "property" values could be available as ViewData automatically, so the partial view could access them without the developer having to configure them (like in the current Render Macro).