Content Targeting Guide

Crafter Engine provides the ability to render content adapted to specific users, depending on different aspects like geographical location, language, preferences, etc. Content that is targeted to users is known in CrafterCMS as targeted content.

Language-Based Localized Content

The most common form of targeted content is language-based localization, which is enabled just by specifying some configuration in the Engine’s Site Config (see Engine Site Configuration):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<site>
    <targeting>
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <rootFolders>/site/website</rootFolders>
        <fallbackTargetId>en</fallbackTargetId>
        <mergeFolders>true</mergeFolders>
        <redirectToTargetedUrl>true</redirectToTargetedUrl>
    </targeting>
</site>

By default, Crafter Engine thinks that targeted content is organized in folders, directly underneath rootFolders. So following the configuration posted above:

Targeting is enabled through the property targeting.enabled.
Each folder underneath /site/website (targeting.rootFolders) will hold the content for a different locale, like en, es, fr, jp, etc.
If for example, Engine will render /site/website/index.xml and the locale for the current user is es_CR, then Engine will try to resolve first to /site/website/es_CR/index.xml, /site/website/es/index.xml, and finally, since en is the targeting.fallbackTargetId, /site/website/en/index.xml. If there was no targeting.fallbackTargetId, then the last candidate page for rendering would be /site/website/index.xml.
The targeting.mergeFolders property will make Engine create merged content trees, which is useful for navigation. For example, assume that for the top navigation of a page the first level of pages under /site/website/{locale} will be displayed, and the locale for the current user again is es_CR. Under es_CR just the “Contact Us” page exists, but under en there are more: “Products”, “About Us” and “Contact Us”. By setting mergeFolders as true, the final pages that are displayed in the navigation would be /site/website/en/products, /site/website/en/about-us and /site/website/es_CR/contact-us.
Normally, if a user goes to mysite.com/contact-us, and the current locale is es_CR, then page to be rendered would be resolved to /site/website/es_CR/contact-us, but the browser navigation bar would still show mysite.com/contact-us. If targeting.redirectToTargetedUrl is set to true, then instead the user is redirected first to mysite.com/es_CR/contact-us.

It’s important to point out that if a page exists several times under the same “family” of locales, like en (fallback), es and es_CR, and the merge strategy for the page is targetedContent, the content is inherited following the path of the most general locale to the most specific one, so /site/website/es_CR/contact-us, would inherit and overwrite the content of /site/website/es/contact-us and /site/website/en/contact-us.

Configuration for Custom Targeted Content

As stated before, the most popular case for targeted content is language-based localization, but it isn’t the only one. Sometimes you need to target content according to the user’s region, country, age, gender, etc. For these cases, a little bit more of coding and configuration is needed:

Implement the org.craftercms.engine.targeting.TargetIdManager and put it under your site’s Classes > groovy folder, with any folders that should be part of the Java package in-between (e.g. Classes > groovy > services > targeting > RegionAndCountryTargetIdManager):
- getCurrentTargetId() should return the target ID for the current user, and if the current user doesn’t have a target ID, the default one. E.g. Assume that we’re targeting content by region and country. The getCurrentTargetId() should then return the region_country ID of the current user (na, na_us, lan, lan_cr, etc), and if the current user doesn’t have associated a region/country, the default na is returned.
- getFallbackTargetId() should return the target ID used as “last resort” when resolving the URL of the page to render to the user. Continuing with the region_country example, let’s say the user requested for the /about page, his current target ID is lan_cr, and the fallback target ID is na. Engine will then look for the page in /site/website/lan_cr/about/index.xml, /site/website/lan/about/index.xml and finally /site/website/na/about/index.xml. If the fallback target ID was null, then instead of /site/website/lan_cr/about/index.xml, Engine would look in /site/website/about/index.xml.
- getAvailableTargetIds() returns a list with all the supported target IDs. In case of the region_country solution, the list would contain all the possible region/country combinations, like na, na_us, na_ca, lan, lan_cr, etc.
Add the TargetIdManager implementation as a Spring bean in your site’s application-context.xml (Config > spring > application-context.xml) with the name crafter.targetIdManager:
```
<bean id="crafter.targetIdManager" class="services.targeting.RegionAndCountryTargetIdManager"/>
```

Targeted Content By File Prefix

By default, Engine expects targeted content to be organized by folders. The most common case is to have pages under /site/website to be grouped under locale folders. So pages for en would be put under /site/website/en, pages for es under /site/website/es, and so on.

But sometimes it’s more useful to have content for different targets to be under the same location. And for those cases, Engine can resolve targeted content by file prefix, like index_en.xml, index_en_US.xml, index_fr.xml, etc. To enable this, add the following bean to your site’s application-context.xml (Config > spring > application-context.xml), which will override the targeted content by folder strategy:

<bean id="crafter.targetedUrlStrategy"
      class="org.craftercms.engine.targeting.impl.TargetedUrlByFileStrategy"
      parent="crafter.targetedUrlStrategyBase"/>