Page rendering process

The following article describes how Sitefinity CMS integrates with Sitefinity ASP.NET Core Renderer to process user requests. After a user requests a page on the public domain, Sitefinity ASP.NET Core Renderer and Sitefinity CMS work together to render the HTML of page to the user, whether it is an ASP.NET Core page or an ASP.NET MVC, a frontend or a backend Sitefinity page.

The following flowchart illustrates the page request handling process:

The process is the following:

1. A user requests a page on the public domain where the ASP.NET Core Renderer is hosted.
   
2. The Renderer forwards the request to Sitefinity CMS.
   
3. Using a custom page header, Sitefinity CMS evaluates whether the page is a ASP.NET Core page or an ASP.NET MVC page, so that it will either delegate the page rendering to the Renderer or to handle it.
   
4. If the requested page is an ASP.NET Core page, Sitefinity CMS returns to the Renderer a JSON file with the page structure. 
   
5. The Renderer stores the ASP.NET Core page templates and ASP.NET Core widgets and uses the JSON with the page structure to render the page.
   
6. The Renderer serves the page HTML to the user.
   

The ASP.NET Core Renderer has the ASP.NET Core page templates and the ASP.NET Core widgets; Sitefinity CMS has the page structure. To render a page, the Renderer uses its ASP.NET Core widgets and templates together with Sitefinity's JSON with the structure.

When the user requests a page that is not an ASP.NET Core page, the Renderer serves as a proxy for Sitefinity CMS, fetches the HTML from Sitefinity CMS, and serves it to the user as it is coming from Sitefinity CMS.

The following flowchart illustrates the page request handling process:

The process is the following:

1. A user requests a page on the public domain where the ASP.NET Core Renderer is hosted.
   
2. The Renderer forwards the request to Sitefinity CMS.
   
3. Using a custom page header, Sitefinity CMS evaluates whether the page is an ASP.NET Core page or an ASP.NET MVC page, so that it will either delegate the page rendering to the Renderer or to handle it.
   
4. If the requested page is not an ASP.NET Core page, Sitefinity CMS renders the HTML of the page and returns it to the Renderer to be served to the user as it is. 
   

The Renderer does not store any resources for pages other than ASP.NET Core pages. Therefore, the rendering of the HTML of such pages is done by Sitefinity CMS and just proxies by the Renderer to the user.