Renderer Models

Problem

A common issue that anyone publishing content to the web faces is how to get their data into different formats than how the data is already stored in their system. For example, Clay stores JSON data but needs to be able to serve RSS feeds, publish content in a format compatible with Apple News or Google Newstand, all while not duplicating and mutating the data for rendering HTML.

Solution

It's important to remember that Clay is a "webpage first" platform. The supported edit interface (Kiln) allows Clay data component editing through an HTML page, so generally components are always built with HTML rendering in mind. For that reason, the model.js file for a component can modify component/layout data for either a JSON or HTML formats. But what if you request an component with a .xml extension? You'll need a renderer to handle the request, but what if that renderer expects a different input than the component's data?

That's where a renderer specific model comes in. It's exactly like a regular model.js file except that it's run after the default regular model.js file and gives you a chance to modify data for a component to meet your renderers needs. The format for a renderer model is a filename in the following format:<RENDERER EXTENSION>.model.js

If you're request is to domain.com/_components/foo/instances/bar.rss , then your model file will need to be named rss.model.js.

Renderer Model Caveat

This does not work for requests to .html extensions, i.e. there is no support for html.model.js files. Your regular model.js file should do everything necessary to support displaying the component in HTML pages.