Linking of Different Documents Within Sophora XML

To link different documents within the Sophora XML you can use the optional attribute externalID of the <document> element. When this external id attribute is used in a reference property somewhere else in the XML document, the Importer automatically hooks the two documents.

In the following example an image gallery containing a reference to an image object is created:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<document nodeType="sophora-content-nt:imagegallery"
          xmlns="http://www.sophoracms.com/import/2.8"
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <properties>
    [...]
  </properties>
  <childNodes>
    <childNode nodeType="sophora-content-nt:imageref" name="sophora-content:image">
      <properties>
        <property name="sophora:reference">
          <value>refImage01</value>
        </property>
      </properties>
      <childNodes/>
      <resourceList>
        <document nodeType="sophora-content-nt:imageobject" externalID="refImage01">
          <properties>
            [...]
          </properties>
          <childNodes>
            <childNode nodeType="sophora-extension-nt:imagedata" name="sophora-extension:imagedata">
              <properties>
                [...]
              </properties>
              <childNodes/>
              <resourceList/>
            </childNode>
          </childNodes>
          <resourceList/>
          <fields>
            [...]
          </fields>
          <instructions>
            [...]
          </instructions>
        </document>
      </resourceList>
    </childNode>
  </childNodes>
  <resourceList/>
  <fields>
    [...]
  </fields>
  <instructions>
    [...]
  </instructions>
</document>

Using this mechanism you can even import documents that reference eachother. This might be the case when two news documents reference each other as a teaser.