Display property on page layout but still rendered in HTML as hidden

Question

I have this page layout where I'm exposing and making editable the 'CustomSiteCategory' property on edit mode

<PublishingWebControls:editmodepanel runat="server" id="editmodepanel1">
    <SharePointWebControls:DropDownChoiceField
          ID="DropDownChoiceField1"
          FieldName="CustomSiteCategory"
          runat="server">
    </SharePointWebControls:DropDownChoiceField>
</PublishingWebControls:editmodepanel>

This works fine and I'm able to modify the property when I edit the page.

Now a new requirement came up to show an icon on the page based on what the 'CustomSiteCategory' is.

I thought this would be trivial, but since 'CustomSiteProperty' is in the EditModePanel, the HTML for it doesn't get rendered when in non-edit mode so I can't use JavaScript sorcery to pull this property.

Ideally, what I would like is for this property to be shown/editable only in edit mode, and outside of it, it should still render in the HTML as something like

<div style="display:none" id="CustomSiteProperty">[CustomSiteProperty value]</div>

Is there any way to do this? I'm also open to alternatives.

Answer 1

Found the solution for this. All I needed to use was <SharePointWebControls:FieldValue>.

Using this, I'm able to do something like this:

<span style="display:none" id="custom-site-property">
  <SharePointWebControls:FieldValue
    id="FieldValue1"
    FieldName="CustomSiteProperty"
    runat="server"/>
</span>

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_{Here's the relevant article that led me to the solution.}