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Advanced key uses

Posted on 12.02.16

Advanced reuse in DITA Lesson 2: Using keys Advanced key uses

Compound uses of the <keydef> element

You can use keydefs to simultaneously define both file paths and text strings. Consider the case where you need to cross-reference a topic in many different places, but you want to use some text other than the topic title in the cross-reference. In this case, you can create a <keydef> element that associates a key with an href to the topic, but also uses the nested <topicmeta> to define a <linktext> element:

<keydef keys="initing_ddb" href="init_ddb.dita">
    <topicmeta>
        <linktext>Initializing the Duck Database</linktext>
    </topicmeta>
</keydef>
If you reference this key in a cross-reference (<xref> element), the link will target init_ddb.dita and the text for the link will be “Initializing the Duck Database”:

<xref keyref="initing_ddb"/>

Key references with fall-backs

If you use both a keyref and an href attribute in an element, a DITA output generator will attempt to resolve the keyref first. If the key is not defined, the href target is used as a fall-back.

Contributors
  • Simon Bate
  • Jake Campbell
  • Gretyl Kinsey
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