In this blog post I am going to show you how you can easily create a broker query with various kinds of criteria specified. I will be using Tridion 2013 and Visual Studio 2010 in this case.
In my
example I have a .NET user control, which is placed inside a Frontend project.
Its goal is to list all the components from Tridion that are using a certain
schema.
First of
all, let’s start with the user control. Here is how mine looks like:
ucListItems.ascx
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| <%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ucListItems.ascx.cs" Inherits="Yabolka.BrokerQuery.Frontend.inc.ucListItems" %> | |
| <ul> | |
| <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="repeaterListItems"> | |
| <ItemTemplate> | |
| <%# Container.DataItem %> | |
| </ItemTemplate> | |
| </asp:Repeater> | |
| </ul> |
We create an unordered list and inside of it, is where the magic is going to happen. There we make a Repeater which will bind all the results from the query. These are going to be returned as list items, containing all the information, with the help of a Component Template.
Now let’s go to the code behind of this control and start with the main implementation that is the topic of the blog post. I am explaining everything with comments inside the code block bellow:
ucLatestNews.ascx.cs
Now let’s go to the code behind of this control and start with the main implementation that is the topic of the blog post. I am explaining everything with comments inside the code block bellow:
ucLatestNews.ascx.cs
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| using System; | |
| using System.Collections.Generic; | |
| using System.Linq; | |
| using System.Web; | |
| using System.Web.UI; | |
| using System.Web.UI.WebControls; | |
| using Tridion.ContentDelivery.DynamicContent.Query; | |
| using Tridion.ContentDelivery.DynamicContent; | |
| namespace Yabolka.BrokerQuery.Frontend.inc | |
| { | |
| public partial class ucListItems : System.Web.UI.UserControl | |
| { | |
| //The id of the component template that we are going to use. | |
| //We have hardcoded the id of the component template for this example. | |
| public string TemplateId = "tcm:6-214-32"; | |
| protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) | |
| { | |
| if (!Page.IsPostBack) | |
| { | |
| BindItems(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| protected void BindItems() | |
| { | |
| //We create a list of strings which will be the data source of our repeater. | |
| List<string> itemsList = new List<string>(); | |
| try | |
| { | |
| //Here is our first criteria - ItemSchemaCriteria. Here we say to the query that we need all the items with the specified schema id. | |
| //We have hardcoded the id of the schema for this example. | |
| ItemSchemaCriteria schemaCriteria = new ItemSchemaCriteria(26); | |
| //We might also want to make a Type criteria. For example, "Is the item type 'Component'?" criteria. | |
| //However, we've already set a schema criteria and this means that we will only have items of type Component returned. | |
| //But we may need the ItemTypeCriteria for other purposes. | |
| //We have hardcoded the id of the type for this example. | |
| ItemTypeCriteria typeCriteria = new ItemTypeCriteria(16); | |
| //We might want to specify the publication as well. For doing so, we can use the PublicationCriteria. | |
| //We have hardcoded the id of the publication for this example. | |
| PublicationCriteria publicationCriteria = new PublicationCriteria(6); | |
| //If we need to specify a limit of the listed items, we may use LimitFilter. In this case we want 4 items to be displayed so we set the parameter to 4. | |
| LimitFilter limitFilter = new LimitFilter(4); | |
| //We create a list of Criteria and add the criteria we specified above to this list. | |
| List<Criteria> allCriteria = new List<Criteria>(); | |
| allCriteria.Add(schemaCriteria); | |
| allCriteria.Add(typeCriteria); | |
| allCriteria.Add(publicationCriteria); | |
| //If we need to sort our results (for example if we want to display the latest items, then we can sort the results by date) | |
| //we can use a SortParameter. In this case we take the value of a Metadata Field called "Date" and we sort the results by it. | |
| //CustomMetaKeyColumn customMetaKeyColumnDate = new CustomMetaKeyColumn("Date", MetadataType.DATE); | |
| //SortParameter sortParameter = new SortParameter(customMetaKeyColumnDate, SortParameter.Descending); | |
| //Create the query. | |
| Query QueryNews = new Query(); | |
| //Add all criteria. | |
| QueryNews.Criteria = CriteriaFactory.And(allCriteria.ToArray()); | |
| //Set the limit filter. | |
| QueryNews.SetResultFilter(limitFilter); | |
| //If we have a sorting parameter we can add it like this. | |
| //QueryNews.AddSorting(sortParameter); | |
| //Execute the query. | |
| String[] ItemResultsNews = QueryNews.ExecuteQuery(); | |
| //Go through the query result entries. | |
| foreach (String news in ItemResultsNews) | |
| { | |
| //Get the component presentation | |
| ComponentPresentationAssembler ass = new ComponentPresentationAssembler(); | |
| //Get the content of the component presentation | |
| string content = ass.GetContent(news, TemplateId); | |
| //Add the content to the data source of the repeater | |
| itemsList.Add(content); | |
| } | |
| if (this.FindControl("repeaterListItems") != null) | |
| { | |
| //Set the repeater's data source and bind the data | |
| repeaterListItems.DataSource = itemsList; | |
| repeaterListItems.DataBind(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| catch (Exception ex) | |
| { | |
| //TODO: Add error logging | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } |
That’s it! Now we are ready to get all the components with schema, which we specified by its id, and display these as we wish. You can go on and give it a try.
Please, don't forget to:
- add the user control to a page where you want to display the components
- make sure that the components are published
- make sure you have the right Tridion DLLs (netrtsn, Tridion.ContentDelivery.Configuration, Tridion.ContentDelivery, Tridion.ContentDelivery.Interop, xmogrt). It is imporant to have these in 32-bit or 64-bit depending on your project
- make sure you have all the JARs from Tridion
- make sure you have configured correctly the config files of Tridion
