Sitecore has recently releases Sitecore Marketplace, which is the way you can go with if you would like to extend Sitecore XM Cloud, Sitecore announced and talked about Sitecore Marketplace in 2024 Sitecore Symposium, here is a previous post you can check about Sitecore Marketplace, in this post I will walk you through my experience creating my first custom field, I wanted to create an image selection field,. where author can select an image from Lytho DAM.
Do you remember the good old days with Sitecore Marketplace for XP/XM? do you miss these days? ok, these days are back but this time with XM Cloud. Sitecore marketplace is the place where developers can dream and their dreams become true :). its your way to extend the platform, have you worked on a project before where you needed a custom functionality that dose not exist OOTB, but you could not find a way to implement it, with Marketplace and Marketplace SDK, look no more, you will be able to accomplish that easily.
Sitecore has recently released Sitecore Marketplace for XM Cloud, in addition to Marketplace SDK, below are useful links:
- https://doc.sitecore.com/mp/en/developers/marketplace/introduction-to-sitecore-marketplace.html
- https://doc.sitecore.com/mp/en/developers/marketplace/marketplace-sdk.html
With Marketplace, you can now extend Sitecore XM cloud, you can build a custom field, a module that import/export content, an AI translation tool...etc. Sitecore Marketplace provides extension points that your module/app can utilize, below is the the list of extension points:
- Full Screen
- Page builder context panel
- page build custom field
- Dashboard Widget
Each has its own usage and goal, Sitecore docs provide all the details you need to understand these, check the above provided urls. for me I started looking into custom field extension point, and how I can utilize that to build a custom image field where a content author can select an image from external source like Lytho DAM, so an integration can be done easily now.
First: Start with creating a NEXTJS app!
You first should create a next JS application that represents your app, in which you will initialise the marketplace SDK and write your custom code, in my case, I wanted a react component that execute an API Call to Lytho API to get a list of assets and display them in a list or grid format.
Second: Build your app and deploy to a hosting platform (Vercel/Netlify)!
In order for XMC to access your application, you would need a public endpoint/url, so you can deploy your app to Netlify or Vercel and get your public url from there.
Third: Create app in Developer Studio in Sitecore Cloud Portal
On XM Cloud portal, a new navigation has been added to get you to the apps management, below is a screenshot for more information:
Once you click the create app button, you will need to enter name of the app and select what type of application you're creating, currently one of the two types is available and other one will be coming soon, below are the types:
- Custom App
- Public App
- Extension Point(s)
- APIs to enable
- Application Url
- Logo Url
- Organizations to enable the app for.
Last thing is to activate the app in order to use in any organization/env your targeting.
Fourth: Install the application into your organization/environment
Once you have the app ready and active, you can make sure its enabled or authorized for specific organizations to use the app, this time you go to my apps nav and then use the (...) on the most right and use the "Update Installation Options" to install the app, see below from more information:
Sixth: Create the custom field in the targeted template!!
A new field type has been releases with Marketplace, field type is Marketplace --> Plugin, which takes the application ID as the source, see below screenshot for more information:
Fifth: Test and Enjoy!!
Once you finish all the above, you will be ready to start using the app on pages builder, see below screenshot fore more information:
In future blog posts will share some code snippets from the above app, in addition to some others app with other extension points. hopefully this will give you an idea of the greatness marketplace will beings.
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