Hitchhiker Theme v1.30: Auto-Initialization & SDK 1.15 (Fall '22 Release)

Product/Library Releases & New Features SDK/Theme Updates
1

Administrators looking to build experiences on the Hitchhikers theme can now take advantage of Theme v1.30 as well as Answers Search UI SDK 1.15!

Updates

:spiral_calendar: This feature is available in Early Access. Here’s how to use the Early Access branches of the Theme! For the Fall '22 release, the theme branch name is early-access-fall-22 .

New Feature

The main update in this theme is auto-initialization in the code editor in situations where the intitializeManually feature is being used. Some administrators use initializeManually for advanced use cases like: tracking visitor analytics or query sources, or dynamically enabling session tracking based on different cookie consent policies. Previously, you could not use the code editor to preview your experience if you set intitiliazeManually to true.

This new theme automatically initializes itself in dev mode by looking for environment variables that are present in dev mode, making it now possible to preview experiences while using initializeManually.

2

I’ve followed the instructions to upgrade to this theme but my site which has intitiliazeManually set to true does not render. Is there anything further I need to do?

3

@henry_kremer @Max_Davish were you able to solve the issue here?

4

Aside from upgrading to the Early Access branch, you will also need to update your ci/serve_setup.sh file. Specifically, you will need to add a line so that it looks like the following:

#!/bin/sh
export NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=1024"

#This will use development mode while in the Yext code editor. Set to "false" to test the production build.
export IS_DEVELOPMENT_PREVIEW='true'

npx jambo build
grunt webpack

This ensures that the initial Preview of your page has auto-initialization. cc: @henry_kremer

5

Thanks @Thomas_Meyer. Does your note on line 4 mean that we have to set IS_DEVELOPMENT_PREVIEW='false' once we are using the build in production?

6

Hi Henry,

IS_DEVELOPMENT_PREVIEW only affects the Code Editor/Live Preview, so you don’t have to change it for your production site to work, but you may want to change it to test the production build within Code Editor. You can read more about it in here:

1 Like