Tutorial: Using StreamMerge and ItemFilterDuplicates in 2sxc 9.10

Two new data-sources help with manipulating lists like never before - let's discover:

1. StreamMerge
2. ItemFilterDuplicates

The StreamMerge DataSource

This data-source will take multiple streams of data, and combine them into one single stream - like this:

Common use cases are

• combining results of different conditions
• combining streams based on relationships 

This is something you need a lot - here some real-life examples:

1. A query should retrieve news-items like this:
   1. of the last 10 days...
   2. but on top of that we also want to show "pinned" news, even if they are older. ...so one filter is date-based, the other category based. 
2. You want to show images:
   1. all which contain any of the words "ocean,sea,wate" in the title
   2. ...and all which are tagged "island"
3. You want to show employees...
   1. all of a certain team
   2. ...and the management above them (which may not be marked as part of the team)

The ItemFilterDuplicates DataSource

This datasource will find duplicate items, and remove them - and optionally give you all the duplicates in another list, in case you need them for further processing. 

The example above shows the results of two filters which were merged - resulting in one item "2sic" included twice. The ItemFilterDuplicates will remove all duplicates on the Default stream, and also offer a stream Duplicates containing all the items which were duplicate. Note that if an item exists 7 times, it will still only be provided once in the Duplicates stream. 

Enhancement to String-Dropdown

There are many cases today where a drop-down is the preferred input-type, but because advanced scenarios require a custom input (like if you want to use a url-parameter to provide the value, requiring you to input [QueryString:SortOrder] instead of asc, it needed an open text field. To better cater to these scenarios, we added a new parameter:

If you set the Enable Free Text to true, the normal dropdown receives a new button on the right side - like this:

If you press that I-bar button, the dropdown will switch into a normal text-box, allowing you to enter a custom value:

Keep Coding

Exiting new features are coming up, hope you love it!

Daniel