Reference
Digest
A reference is a special asset in Cascade that represents an existing asset in another location; thus, a single asset can appear to exist in multiple locations. While a single asset appears in navigation as if it were in multiple locations, in actuality, it directs back to the original asset.
Concept
A Reference is a special Home area asset that allows users to create shortcuts to non-reference Home area assets. The reference, when indexed by an Index block, will render content for the linked-to asset. Deleting the reference will have no effect on the referenced asset.
References are a great way of creating index block renders, as users are able to create a folder of explicitly chosen content that can be quickly indexed by an index block that is set to render the folder of references.
References are often used to have links show up in navigation menus in other folders than where the page actually resides.
Technical
Creating a Reference
In each example below, we have provided both the view in Cascade, and the real-world view of how the navigation, etc. would appear in your site.
1. Navigate to the page you want to create a reference for (here we display both the view in Cascade, and the real-world result of how your page’s navigation would appear):
In this example, we'll use the page with the System Name called "default" and the Display Name metadata of "This page here."
2. On the page, click on Advanced -> Reference:
3. The Reference screen will give you two options for the reference:
- System Name - The name as it will appear in the Asset Tree.
- Parent Folder - The location the reference will sit.
After setting the options, submit the page.
In this example, we'll name the Reference "reference" and the put it in the "news" folder for the site.
4. The Reference is now created!
In this example, our reference is located in the "news" folder in the Asset Tree. The navigation for this site is based off of the pages in the folder structure. With our new reference in the "news" folder, the navigation looks like this:
The index block for the navigation has the same XML data for the reference as the original page. This is why the same page shows up in the navigation twice for this site.