| Feature | In DXA | DD4T .NET | DD4T Java | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Features of the models | ||||
| Attribute-driven | Yes | Yes | Yes | Both attributes will be backwards compatible, but will choose one preferred one for future usage, try to consolidate/minimise use of attribute. Metadata could be separate property, but does not have to be |
| Support for strongly typed page models | Yes | Yes | Partial | |
| Support for page regions | Yes (in generic pages) | Yes (in custom page models) | No | Regions in DXA are created in the generic page to group CPs, in DD4T there are attributes to let you model this on the page. Regions should be in the Generic page model and have a pluggable region mapper. |
| Link and rich text resolving | Yes | Yes | Yes | Linking: Needs to be in the model and extendible. Mark properties as dynamic to decide on the spot. Rich Text: Needs to be in the model and extendible. DXA has a type which can contain html but also full entity models, should be an implementation of the rich text models |
| Multiple attributes on a property | Yes | No | Yes | Need to be clear on ordering and functional logic DXA and Java do it but maybe differently |
| Search in a tree structure (Flattening) | Yes | No | No | Good feature, but it must be made optionalSchema.org . Should only go into embedded fields and not linked components. Should this be enabled/disabled on a property basis, model basis or implementation basis? |
| Semantic vocabularies (eg schema.org) support | Yes | No | No | DXA currently requires that schema information published separately (publish settings page) - this is a bit of a pain so we should look at putting the semantics info in the DD4T JSON. |
| Multiple schemas per viewmodel | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Multiple viewmodels per schema | Yes? | Yes | Yes | |
| Extensible attributes | No | Yes | No | Cleanup necessary. |
| Lazy properties? | No | No | No | Not needed in the framework - up to implementation - not really what MVC is about. DXA has ability to ignore individual properties, or all properties on the model by default which do not have attributes for mapping. |
| Implicit mappings | Yes | ? | NoEspecially in combination with ExternalContentProviders | Use existing conventions from DXA |
Self linking | Yes | ? | Bug | DXA uses a reserved "_self" 'field' name in the attributes for this |
| Map all properties to Dictionary | Yes | No | No | DXA Can map all schema fields to a single property of type dictionary/map - used for configuration models |
| Features of the model builder | ||||
| Uses reflection only once | No | Yes | DD4T reads all model information only once (using reflection), and uses it many times | |
| Independent from MVC | Not sure? | Yes | It must be possible to use the ViewModels outside the context of MVC to facilitate testing etc | |
| Injecting ExternalContentProviders | No | No | ||
| Single-step approach (from json to strongly typed object) | No | No | Yes | Nice to have - interesting to know what if any performance gain this gives. Needs to be extendible in the same way as you have modelbuilder pipeline. Needs to be EASY to create your own attributes. |
| Inject viewmodels using ModelBinder | No | Yes (in feature branch) | Multiple ModelBinders to support various ViewModel implementations | |
| Support for older viewmodel architectures (DXA and DD4T) | No | No | Important to offer an upgrade path for all customers! | |
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