Presentation Object Model
As a template developer you need to know the overall structure of the Java object model described above. However, you will primarily work with a simpler object model called the presentation object model. The presentation object model is provided by a layer of software in the Content Engine called the presentation layer:
The purpose of the presentation layer is to provide template developers with a set of objects that are both simpler to use and more efficient than the underlying API objects. The presentation layer only contains presentation objects for the most important and frequently-used API objects however, so you will need to deal with both presentation objects and API objects. This is why the presentation layer is shown as an incomplete layer in the above diagram.
The main objects in the presentation object model are:
The PresentationArticle
object has a direct
one-to-one relationship with the API Article
object, and represents a content item. The
PresentationElement
object represents other
content items. A PresentationArticle
contains one
PresentationElement
(referred to as
summary) for each related content item.
PresentationElements
are grouped by
relation type (see
Relations).
The PresentationPool
object has a one-to-one
relationship with the API pool object, and represents a section
page. It contains one PresentationElement
object
which represents the grid used to organize the layout of links on
the section page. A PresentationElement
object
can contain other PresentationElement
objects to
form a tree of groups and
areas that can represent the logical structure
of a complicated multi-column layout. PresentationElement objects
can also represent the content item "teasers" (called
summaries) displayed on section pages.
The package name of the presentation classes is
neo.xredsys.presentation
, so the fully qualified
class names are
neo.xredsys.presentation.PresentationPool
,
neo.xredsys.presentation.PresentationArticle
,
etc.
When you are designing your templates you will need to access both information held in presentation objects and information held in API objects. In both cases the objects are made available to you as JavaBeans. For more information about this and other Java-based web technologies, see Java Web Technologies.