The first episode of the Ask the Experts show in 2021 was hosted last week. It's a show in which we tackle all your Xperience-related questions and other exciting topics. On this episode, I was joined by two of our Kentico Xperience MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals)—Sean G. Wright and Trevor Fayas.
Ask the Experts #2
Welcome to Ask the Experts! A show where we talk about and answer your questions around developing on, and for #KenticoXperience
After the pilot episode in December 2020, Sean had an excellent idea: showcase some of the contributions made to Kentico Xperience by the community. We've agreed that this would be a great way to start our shows.
Community highlights
Query debugger
The first contribution we looked at was Sean's query debugger. This contribution came out of the desire to reduce the development loop while using document query APIs and understanding the data being returned. It's a simple project that runs cross-platform to test out and debug the Kentico Xperience Document and Object Query APIs. Thanks to that, you can see the SQL generated by these APIs without ever hitting the SQL database. And if you want to see the data set returned by this query, you can take the generated SQL and run it on the SQL server, or add a ".ToList()" to get the data.
Query extensions
Our second contribution of the day—another one from Sean—was a set of query extensions. These extension methods were born out of common patterns Sean has come across while building various projects and applications.
If there are other queries you've found useful and would like to include in this library, don't keep them to yourself. Let them shine and inspire others! Sean is ready to accept your pull request to make this library as robust and comprehensive as possible.
Kentico Xperience 13 Core Baseline
The final highlight was a getting started baseline project for Kentico Xperience 13 from Trevor Fayas. This project was a migration from a previous baseline project Trevor did for Kentico 12. His company uses it to get started on all their projects. In our discussion, Trevor also touches on his experience with migrating from Kentico Xperience 12 to 13.
For more tips and inspiration, look for Trevor's new video on the baseline project and how you can use it to get started on your next project, coming soon to the Xperience YouTube channel.
Kentico Xperience MVP Award
Recently, we announced the 2021 Kentico Xperience Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award recipients. It's great to see both Sean and Trevor's names included on that list! If you're interested in learning more about the award, make sure to check out the Xperience MVP page. Besides other things, it outlines what we look for in an Xperience MVP as well as the benefits MVPs receive as part of the award.
Also, make sure to watch this section of the video to hear why Sean and Trevor wanted to become MVPs and the benefits they have received while being a part of the program.
Final thoughts
As we wrapped up the new year's first episode, Sean had an excellent idea about adding more voices to the Ask the Experts show.
Have you solved a problem, do you have one that needs solving, or would you like to share your experience with Kentico Xperience? Reach out to me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or drop us a message on the Ask the Experts discussion board, and we'll get you on the show!
Also, if you've got a topic you want to know more about, a problem you're having trouble with, best practices for handling specific scenarios, or anything else—make sure to drop a message on the discussion board as well.
Join us LIVE for our next show on February 18, 2021 @ 9 am CST / 3 pm GMT, or catch it on demand over on the Kentico Xperience YouTube channel.
See you in the chat!