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.