How can I add a new custom standard value token for sitecore branch templates?

Question

Sitecore comes with several standard custom value tokens when creating branch templates (i.e. $name for the name of the new item, $parentid, for the id of the parent).

Is there anyway to add new variables?

Specifically I want a variable that will allow me to access the items path when added?

Answer 1

There is a sitecore blog post for this ADD CUSTOM STANDARD VALUES TOKENS IN THE SITECORE ASP.NET CMS but TBH, it's wrong . I'm not sure why sitecore insist on producing "untested prototype(s)" all the time in these posts. The guy in that blog literally says You can implement a solution based on the following untested prototype o_O

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For some reason sitecore are jumping though various hoops to decompile the source and then recreate it (give a man a hammer and everything looks like a nail maybe?). This makes your code very fragile should the default behaviour change and is just totally unnecessary.

You can add a new variable in a few lines of code:

public class NewVariablesReplacer : MasterVariablesReplacer
{
    public override string Replace(string text, Item targetItem)
    {
        //still need to assert these here
        Sitecore.Diagnostics.Assert.ArgumentNotNull(text, "text");
        Sitecore.Diagnostics.Assert.ArgumentNotNull(targetItem, "targetItem");
        string tempTxt = text;


        if (text.Contains("$path"))
        {
            Sitecore.Diagnostics.Assert.ArgumentNotNull(targetItem.Paths, "targetItem.Paths");
            Sitecore.Diagnostics.Assert.ArgumentNotNull(targetItem.Paths.FullPath, "targetItem.Paths.FullPath");
            tempTxt = text.Replace("$path", targetItem.Paths.FullPath);
        }
        
        //Do what you would normally do.
        return base.Replace(tempTxt, targetItem);
    }
}

This works without decompiling because it retains the base functionality by calling base.Replace(text, targetItem);.

You then need to alter the default behaviour in the xml as in the blog post:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <settings>
      <setting name="MasterVariablesReplacer">
        <patch:attribute name="value">Sitecore.Sharedsource.Data.NewVariablesReplacer ,Sitecore.Sharedsource</patch:attribute>
      </setting>
    </settings>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>