Sitecore Scheduled Publishing Module - Published 10.4 packages and Docker images

Sitecore Scheduled Publishing module has been updated to support Sitecore 10.4. Following changes were made as part of the release. 

1. Updated Source to Sitecore 10.4
   
   Module source has been updated to 10.4. 
   
   
2. Created Packages for Sitecore 10.4
   
   Two packages were created. One is with IAR files for content and another one is the regular Sitecore content package. 
   
   
3. Created and published Docker Images
   
   Created and published new Docker image with tag 10.4. This image is built with IAR files. Along with 10.4 tag, latest tag has been updated to 10.4. You can view it here in Docker Hub. 
   
   
4. Documentation updated for schedular configuration
   
   In order for the scheduled publishing to publish the content, Sitecore's scheduling frequency and interval needs to be adjusted. This has been clearly documented in Readme markdown.

A new release has been added in GitHub with all the relevant assets. https://github.com/nehemiahj/SCScheduledPublishing/releases/tag/Sitecore_10.4

Sitecore 9, 10 - Experience Editor Slow or Hang in general or for non-English languages?

As part of the Sitecore Upgrade to Sitecore 10.0.1, we faced an issue related to experience editor. When we try to edit the page in experience editor for non-english version of the item, the CM website hangs and then it will just block every other requests. Entire CM instance will be unavailable. 

Troubleshooting:

1. Checked the Vanilla Sitecore 10.0.1 version and experience editor is working as expected. 
2. Debugged the solution and found out that Dictionary API (Sitecore.Globalization.Translate.Text) is the root cause for the slowness. 

Solution:

Sitecore has reported a similar issue as a known issue for Sitecore 9.3 onwards and the fix was included in Sitecore 10.1.0. Sitecore article has a fix for version 9.3 in their page. 

Reached out to Sitecore to get the fix for Sitecore 10.0.1 version. For this version, the hotfix has a set of DLLs and a config file. They are not support DLLs. So we should include this as part of the CI/CD pipeline so that it does not get overwritten next time. 

After applying the fix, the experience editor started to respond for all the other languages as well. 

Reach out to Sitecore if your Sitecore version (9.3 to 10.0.1) has a similar issue on experience editor and they will be providing the hotfix for the particular version. 

Sitecore RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item changed? - Sitecore 9 vs Sitecore 10

As part of  Sitecore 9 to Sitecore 10 upgrade, few components did not work after the upgrade and it was related to the rendering datasource.

Problem: I have a datasource on an ancestor Controller rendering. Child Controller rendering does not have a datasource. Child Controller rendering uses ancestor rendering datasource Item to render the data. After the Sitecore 10 upgrade, Child Controller rendering couldn't get the ancestor datasource item using RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item and instead it returned page content Item. 

There is a great blog on Sitecore MVC Rendering datasource topic by Matthew Dresser. He explains about RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item clearly. It helps to "get datasource of the current rendering, or the datasource of an ancestor rendering if specified, or the page item if no datasource set and no ancestor rendering with datasource. Rendering datasource takes priority". Datasource of an ancestor rendering will be returned if the setting Mvc.AllowDataSourceNesting is true. It is true by default.

After the upgrade, RenderingContext.Current.Rendering.Item does not return ancestor rendering datasource and instead it returns Page context item. 

Raised a Sitecore Support ticket whether it is an expected change or a bug. Will update once I hear from them.

As workaround, I wanted it to behave in the same fashion to reduce the impact. I added a wrapper method which gives priority to child rendering datasource if available, then ancestor rendering datasource if available and then page context item. 

References:

• https://www.matthewdresser.com/sitecore/sitecore-mvc-rendering-datasources
• https://sitecorechat.slack.com/archives/C09SJ4FHC/p1622740554167200