I've created a custom section in Umbraco 7 that references external urls, but have a requirement to extend it to use exactly the same functionality as the media picker from the 'Content' rich text editor. I don't need any other rich text functionality other than to load the media picker overlay from an icon, and select either an internal or external url.
I've tried to distil the umbraco source code, as well as trying various adaptations of online tutorials, but as yet I can't get the media picker to load.
I know that fundamentally I need:
Another angular controller to return the data from the content
'getall' method
An html section that contains the media picker overlay
A reference in the edit.html in my custom section to launch the overlay.
However, as yet I haven't been able to wire it all together, so any help much appreciated.
So, this is how I came up with the solution.....
The first win was that I discovered 2 excellent tutorial blog posts, upon the shoulders of which this solution stands, so much respect to the following code cats:
Tim Geyssons - Nibble postings:
http://www.nibble.be/?p=440
Markus Johansson - Enkelmedia
http://www.enkelmedia.se/blogg/2013/11/22/creating-custom-sections-in-umbraco-7-part-1.aspx
Create a model object to represent a keyphrase, which will be associated to a new, simple, ORM table.
The ToString() method allows a friendly name to be output on the front-end.
[TableName("Keyphrase")]
public class Keyphrase
{
[PrimaryKeyColumn(AutoIncrement = true)]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Phrase { get; set; }
public string Link { get; set; }
public override string ToString()
{
return Name;
}
}
Create an Umbraco 'application' that will register the new custom section by implementing the IApplication interface. I've called mine 'Utilities' and associated it to the utilities icon.
[Application("Utilities", "Utilities", "icon-utilities", 8)]
public class UtilitiesApplication : IApplication { }
The decorator allows us to supply a name, alias, icon and sort-order of the new custom section.
Create an Umbraco tree web controller that will allow us to create the desired menu behaviour for our keyphrases, and display the keyphrase collection from our database keyphrase table.
[PluginController("Utilities")]
[Umbraco.Web.Trees.Tree("Utilities", "KeyphraseTree", "Keyphrase", iconClosed: "icon-doc", sortOrder: 1)]
public class KeyphraseTreeController : TreeController
{
private KeyphraseApiController _keyphraseApiController;
public KeyphraseTreeController()
{
_keyphraseApiController = new KeyphraseApiController();
}
protected override TreeNodeCollection GetTreeNodes(string id, FormDataCollection queryStrings)
{
var nodes = new TreeNodeCollection();
var keyphrases = _keyphraseApiController.GetAll();
if (id == Constants.System.Root.ToInvariantString())
{
foreach (var keyphrase in keyphrases)
{
var node = CreateTreeNode(
keyphrase.Id.ToString(),
"-1",
queryStrings,
keyphrase.ToString(),
"icon-book-alt",
false);
nodes.Add(node);
}
}
return nodes;
}
protected override MenuItemCollection GetMenuForNode(string id, FormDataCollection queryStrings)
{
var menu = new MenuItemCollection();
if (id == Constants.System.Root.ToInvariantString())
{
// root actions
menu.Items.Add<CreateChildEntity, ActionNew>(ui.Text("actions", ActionNew.Instance.Alias));
menu.Items.Add<RefreshNode, ActionRefresh>(ui.Text("actions", ActionRefresh.Instance.Alias), true);
return menu;
}
else
{
menu.Items.Add<ActionDelete>(ui.Text("actions", ActionDelete.Instance.Alias));
}
return menu;
}
}
The class decorators and TreeController extension allow us to declare the web controller for our keyphrase tree, associate it to our Utilities custom section, as well as choose an icon and sort order.
We also declare an api controller (we'll get to that!), which will allow us access to our Keyphrase data object.
The GetTreeNodes method allows us to iterate the keyphrase data collection and return the resultant nodes to the view.
The GetMenuNode method allows us to create the menu options we require for our custom section.
We state that if the node is the root (Utilities), then allow us to add child nodes and refresh the node collection.
However, if we are lower in the node tree (Keyphrase) then we only want users to be able to delete the node (ie the user shouldn't be allowed to create another level of nodes deeper than Keyphrase)
Create an api controller for our Keyphrase CRUD requests
public class KeyphraseApiController : UmbracoAuthorizedJsonController
{
public IEnumerable<Keyphrase> GetAll()
{
var query = new Sql().Select("*").From("keyphrase");
return DatabaseContext.Database.Fetch<Keyphrase>(query);
}
public Keyphrase GetById(int id)
{
var query = new Sql().Select("*").From("keyphrase").Where<Keyphrase>(x => x.Id == id);
return DatabaseContext.Database.Fetch<Keyphrase>(query).FirstOrDefault();
}
public Keyphrase PostSave(Keyphrase keyphrase)
{
if (keyphrase.Id > 0)
DatabaseContext.Database.Update(keyphrase);
else
DatabaseContext.Database.Save(keyphrase);
return keyphrase;
}
public int DeleteById(int id)
{
return DatabaseContext.Database.Delete<Keyphrase>(id);
}
}
Create the custom section views with angular controllers, which is the current architectual style in Umbraco 7.
It should be noted that Umbraco expects that your custom section components are put into the following structure App_Plugins//BackOffice/
We need a view to display and edit our keyphrase name, target phrase and url
<form name="keyphraseForm"
ng-controller="Keyphrase.KeyphraseEditController"
ng-show="loaded"
ng-submit="save(keyphrase)"
val-form-manager>
<umb-panel>
<umb-header>
<div class="span7">
<umb-content-name placeholder=""
ng-model="keyphrase.Name" />
</div>
<div class="span5">
<div class="btn-toolbar pull-right umb-btn-toolbar">
<umb-options-menu ng-show="currentNode"
current-node="currentNode"
current-section="{{currentSection}}">
</umb-options-menu>
</div>
</div>
</umb-header>
<div class="umb-panel-body umb-scrollable row-fluid">
<div class="tab-content form-horizontal" style="padding-bottom: 90px">
<div class="umb-pane">
<umb-control-group label="Target keyphrase" description="Keyphrase to be linked'">
<input type="text" class="umb-editor umb-textstring" ng-model="keyphrase.Phrase" required />
</umb-control-group>
<umb-control-group label="Keyphrase link" description="Internal or external url">
<p>{{keyphrase.Link}}</p>
<umb-link-picker ng-model="keyphrase.Link" required/>
</umb-control-group>
<div class="umb-tab-buttons" detect-fold>
<div class="btn-group">
<button type="submit" data-hotkey="ctrl+s" class="btn btn-success">
<localize key="buttons_save">Save</localize>
</button>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</umb-panel>
</form>
This utilises umbraco and angular markup to display data input fields dynamically and associate our view to an angular controller that interacts with our data layer
angular.module("umbraco").controller("Keyphrase.KeyphraseEditController",
function ($scope, $routeParams, keyphraseResource, notificationsService, navigationService) {
$scope.loaded = false;
if ($routeParams.id == -1) {
$scope.keyphrase = {};
$scope.loaded = true;
}
else {
//get a keyphrase id -> service
keyphraseResource.getById($routeParams.id).then(function (response) {
$scope.keyphrase = response.data;
$scope.loaded = true;
});
}
$scope.save = function (keyphrase) {
keyphraseResource.save(keyphrase).then(function (response) {
$scope.keyphrase = response.data;
$scope.keyphraseForm.$dirty = false;
navigationService.syncTree({ tree: 'KeyphraseTree', path: [-1, -1], forceReload: true });
notificationsService.success("Success", keyphrase.Name + " has been saved");
});
};
});
Then we need html and corresponding angular controller for the keyphrase delete behaviour
<div class="umb-pane" ng-controller="Keyphrase.KeyphraseDeleteController">
<p>
Are you sure you want to delete {{currentNode.name}} ?
</p>
<div>
<div class="umb-pane btn-toolbar umb-btn-toolbar">
<div class="control-group umb-control-group">
<a href="" class="btn btn-link" ng-click="cancelDelete()"
<localize key="general_cancel">Cancel</localize>
</a>
<a href="" class="btn btn-primary" ng-click="delete(currentNode.id)">
<localize key="general_ok">OK</localize>
</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Utilise Umbraco's linkpicker to allow a user to select an internal or external url.
We need html markup to launch the LinkPicker
<div>
<ul class="unstyled list-icons">
<li>
<i class="icon icon-add blue"></i>
<a href ng-click="openLinkPicker()" prevent-default>Select</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
And an associated directive js file that launches the link picker and posts the selected url back to the html view
angular.module("umbraco.directives")
.directive('umbLinkPicker', function (dialogService, entityResource) {
return {
restrict: 'E',
replace: true,
templateUrl: '/App_Plugins/Utilities/umb-link-picker.html',
require: "ngModel",
link: function (scope, element, attr, ctrl) {
ctrl.$render = function () {
var val = parseInt(ctrl.$viewValue);
if (!isNaN(val) && angular.isNumber(val) && val > 0) {
entityResource.getById(val, "Content").then(function (item) {
scope.node = item;
});
}
};
scope.openLinkPicker = function () {
dialogService.linkPicker({ callback: populateLink });
}
scope.removeLink = function () {
scope.node = undefined;
updateModel(0);
}
function populateLink(item) {
scope.node = item;
updateModel(item.url);
}
function updateModel(id) {
ctrl.$setViewValue(id);
}
}
};
});
There is one final js file that allows us to send data across the wire, with everyone's favourite http verbs GET, POST(handles put too here too) and DELETE
angular.module("umbraco.resources")
.factory("keyphraseResource", function ($http) {
return {
getById: function (id) {
return $http.get("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/GetById?id=" + id);
},
save: function (keyphrase) {
return $http.post("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/PostSave", angular.toJson(keyphrase));
},
deleteById: function (id) {
return $http.delete("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/DeleteById?id=" + id);
}
};
});
In addition, we will need a package manifest to register our javascript behaviour
{
javascript: [
'~/App_Plugins/Utilities/BackOffice/KeyphraseTree/edit.controller.js',
'~/App_Plugins/Utilities/BackOffice/KeyphraseTree/delete.controller.js',
'~/App_Plugins/Utilities/keyphrase.resource.js',
'~/App_Plugins/Utilities/umbLinkPicker.directive.js'
]
}
Implement tweaks to allow the CMS portion of the solution to work correctly.
At this point we've almost got our custom section singing, but we just need to jump a couple more Umbraco hoops, namely
a) add a keyphrase event class that creates our keyphrase db table if it doesn't exist (see point 8)
b) fire up Umbraco and associate the new custom section to the target user (from the User menu)
c) alter the placeholder text for the custom section by searching for it in umbraco-->config-->en.xml and swapping out the placeholder text for 'Utilities'
Intercept target content fields of target datatypes when content is saved or published
The requirement I was given was to intercept the body content of a news article, so you'll need to create a document type in Umbraco that has, for example, a title field of type 'Textstring', and bodyContent field of type 'Richtext editor'.
You'll also want a, or many, keyphrase(s) to target, which should now be in a new Umbraco custom section, 'Utilities'
Here I've targeted the keyphrase 'technology news' to link to the bbc technology news site so that any time I write the phrase 'technology news' the href link will be inserted automatically.
This is obviously quite a simple example, but would be quite powerful if a user needed to link to certain repetitive legal documents, for example tax, property, due dilligence, for example, which could be hosted either externally or within the CMS itself. The href link will open an external resource in a new tab, and internal resource in the same window (we'll get to that in Point 9)
So, the principle of what we're trying to achieve is to intercept the Umbraco save event for a document and manipulate our rich text to insert our link. This is done as follows:
a) Establish a method (ContentServiceOnSaving) that will fire when a user clicks 'save', or 'publish and save'.
b) Target our desired content field to find our keyphrases.
c) Parse the target content html against our keyphrase collection to create our internal/external links.
NB: If you just want to get the custom section up and running, you only need the ApplicationStarted method to create the KeyPhrase table.
public class KeyphraseEvents : ApplicationEventHandler
{
private KeyphraseApiController _keyphraseApiController;
protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication,
ApplicationContext applicationContext)
{
_keyphraseApiController = new KeyphraseApiController();
ContentService.Saving += ContentServiceOnSaving;
var db = applicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database;
if (!db.TableExist("keyphrase"))
{
db.CreateTable<Keyphrase>(false);
}
}
private void ContentServiceOnSaving(IContentService sender, SaveEventArgs<IContent> saveEventArgs)
{
var keyphrases = _keyphraseApiController.GetAll();
var keyphraseContentParser = new KeyphraseContentParser();
foreach (IContent content in saveEventArgs.SavedEntities)
{
if (content.ContentType.Alias.Equals("NewsArticle"))
{
var blogContent = content.GetValue<string>("bodyContent");
var parsedBodyText = keyphraseContentParser.ReplaceKeyphrasesWithLinks(blogContent, keyphrases);
content.SetValue("bodyContent", parsedBodyText);
}
}
}
}
The ContentServiceOnSaving method allows us to intercept any save event in Umbraco. Afterwhich we check our incoming content to see if it's of the type we're expecting - in this example 'NewsArticle' - and if it is, then target the 'bodyContent' section, parse this with our 'KeyphraseContentParser', and swap the current 'bodyContent' with the parsed 'bodyContent'.
Create a Keyphrase parser to swap keyphrases for internal/external links
public class KeyphraseContentParser
{
public string ReplaceKeyphrasesWithLinks(string htmlContent, IEnumerable<Keyphrase> keyphrases)
{
var parsedHtmlStringBuilder = new StringBuilder(htmlContent);
foreach (var keyphrase in keyphrases)
{
if (htmlContent.CaseContains(keyphrase.Phrase, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
var index = 0;
do
{
index = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString()
.IndexOf(keyphrase.Phrase, index, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
if (index != -1)
{
var keyphraseSuffix = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString(index, keyphrase.Phrase.Length + 4);
var keyPhraseFromContent = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString(index, keyphrase.Phrase.Length);
var keyphraseTarget = "_blank";
if (keyphrase.Link.StartsWith("/"))
{
keyphraseTarget = "_self";
}
var keyphraseLinkReplacement = String.Format("<a href='{0}' target='{1}'>{2}</a>",
keyphrase.Link, keyphraseTarget, keyPhraseFromContent);
if (!keyphraseSuffix.Equals(String.Format("{0}</a>", keyPhraseFromContent)))
{
parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Remove(index, keyPhraseFromContent.Length);
parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Insert(index, keyphraseLinkReplacement);
index += keyphraseLinkReplacement.Length;
}
else
{
var previousStartBracket = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString().LastIndexOf("<a", index);
var nextEndBracket = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString().IndexOf("a>", index);
parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Remove(previousStartBracket, (nextEndBracket - (previousStartBracket - 2)));
parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Insert(previousStartBracket, keyphraseLinkReplacement);
index = previousStartBracket + keyphraseLinkReplacement.Length;
}
}
} while (index != -1);
}
}
return parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString();
}
}
It's probably easiest to step through the above code, but fundamentally the parser has to:
a) find and wrap all keyphrases, ignoring case, with a link to an internal CMS, or external web resource.
b) handle an already parsed html string to both leave links in place and not create nested links.
c) allow CMS keyphrase changes to be updated in the parsed html string.
The blog of this, as well as the github code can be found from the links in the previous post.
Ok, so after finding some excellent helper posts and digging around I came up with the solution, which I've written about here:
http://frazzledcircuits.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/umbraco-7-automatic-keyphrase.html
And the source code is here:
https://github.com/AdTarling/UmbracoSandbox
I'm trying to generate a HTML document with RazorEngine (http://razorengine.codeplex.com/). Everything is mostly working, but the problem I have now is some of the HTML is being rendered correctly, and HTML that I have nested in that is being rendered as literal HTML, so rather than the browser displaying the tables & divs as expected, it's displaying e.g.
"<table></table><div></div>"
I kick off this process by calling the following:
string completeHTML = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse("InstallationTemplate.cshtml", new { Data = viewModels });
The completeHTML is then written to a file.
"InstallationTemplate.cshtml" is defined as:
#{
var installationReport = new InstallationReport(Model.Data);
}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<div>
<!-- I would expect this to write the rendered HTML
in place of "#installationReport.DigiChannels()" -->
#installationReport.DigiChannels()
</div>
</body>
</html>
Where InstallationReport and DigiChannels are defined as follows:
public static class InstallationReportExtensions
{
public static string DigiChannels(this InstallationReport installationReport)
{
return installationReport.GetDigiChannelsHtml();
}
}
public class InstallationReport
{
public string GetDigiChannelsHtml()
{
// the following renders the template correctly
string renderedHtml = RazorReport.GetHtml("DigiChannels.cshtml", GetDigiChannelData());
return renderedHtml;
}
}
public static string GetHtml(string templateName, object data)
{
var templateString = GetTemplateString(templateName);
return RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(templateString, data);
}
After GetDigiChannelsHtml() runs and returns renderedHtml, the line of execution returns to TemplateBase.cs into the method ITemplate.Run(ExecuteContext context), which is defined as:
string ITemplate.Run(ExecuteContext context)
{
_context = context;
var builder = new StringBuilder();
using (var writer = new StringWriter(builder))
{
_context.CurrentWriter = writer;
Execute(); // this is where my stuff gets called
_context.CurrentWriter = null;
}
if (Layout != null)
{
// Get the layout template.
var layout = ResolveLayout(Layout);
// Push the current body instance onto the stack for later execution.
var body = new TemplateWriter(tw => tw.Write(builder.ToString()));
context.PushBody(body);
return layout.Run(context);
}
return builder.ToString();
}
When I inspect builder.ToString(), I can see it contains proper HTML for the InstallationTemplate.cshtml stuff, and escaped HTML for the DigiChannels.cshtml stuff. For example:
How can I get #installationReport.DigiChannels() to include the correct HTML instead of the escaped HTML that it's currently doing?
Have you tried:
#Raw(installationReport.DigiChannels())
Edit : I could use it in following way (MVC3)
#Html.Raw(installationReport.DigiChannels())
The alternative to #Raw is to change your API to return HtmlStrings in appropriate places
Represents an HTML-encoded string that should not be encoded again.
The default razor behaviour is to encode strings.
This is the row I'm having problems with:
<% using(Html.BeginForm("Create#result", "Report", FormMethod.Post)) { %>
Using C# 3.5 and MVC2 the form was rendered like this:
<form action="/Report.aspx/Create#result" method="post">
Now with C# 4.0 and MVC2 the form is rendered like this:
<form action="/Report.aspx/Create%23result" method="post">
This causes problems:
System.Web.HttpException (0x80004005): A public action method 'Create#result' was not found
I think the new behaviour is problematic and I don't want the hash escaped.
Where does it occur?
Can I change the behaviour?
The MVC version should be updated at some time, but I was working on another part when this behaviour started causing problems.
Update
I solved it by updating the form action using jquery on the client.
The form
<% using(Html.BeginForm("Create", "Report", FormMethod.Post, new { id = "frmReport" })) { %>
Javascript
var frmReport = $("#frmReport");
if (0 < frmReport.length) {
var action = frmReport.attr("action");
action = action + "#result";
frmReport.attr("action", action);
}
This occurs deep within a MVC class System.Web.Mvc.TagBuilder meaning that there probably isn't a lot you can do about it. I wouldn't be surprised if this code hasn't changed, but that the underlying html encoding function was modified with .NET 4 instead.
private void AppendAttributes(StringBuilder sb)
{
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> current in this.Attributes)
{
string key = current.Key;
if (!string.Equals(key, "id", StringComparison.Ordinal) || !string.IsNullOrEmpty(current.Value))
{
string value = HttpUtility.HtmlAttributeEncode(current.Value);
sb.Append(' ').Append(key).Append("=\"").Append(value).Append('"');
}
}
}
That said I'm surprised this was working for you in the first place, I believe some browsers (IE) don't support hashtags in form postbacks.
How do I nest multiple labels and inputs inside form tag with HtmlHelper in ASP.NET MVC3?
My code is below:
public static string GenerateFormForContact(this HtmlHelper helper, string method, string action, bool includeMailTag)
{
//form tag
TagBuilder form = new TagBuilder("form");
form.Attributes.Add("action", action);
form.Attributes.Add("method", method);
//label and input tag
TagBuilder labelClientName = new TagBuilder("label");
labelClientName.Attributes.Add("for", "clientName");
TagBuilder inputClientName = new TagBuilder("input");
inputClientName.Attributes.Add("name", "clientName");
inputClientName.Attributes.Add("type", "text");
inputClientName.Attributes.Add("placeholder", "Your name");
inputClientName.Attributes.Add("required", "required");
//how to insert inside form
TagBuilder labelEmailName = new TagBuilder("label");
labelEmailName.Attributes.Add("for", "emailName");
TagBuilder inputEmailName = new TagBuilder("input");
inputEmailName.Attributes.Add("name", "emailName");
inputEmailName.Attributes.Add("type", "email");
inputEmailName.Attributes.Add("placeholder", "Your mail");
inputEmailName.Attributes.Add("required", "required");
//how to insert again inside form the second label and input
//how to insert again inside form the n-th label and input
return form.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
}
If you want to enclose labelEmailName, inputEmailName and other elements (TagBuilder's) within the already-created form or any other TagBuilder use TagBuilder.InnerHtml Like this:
form.InnerHtml += labelEmailName.ToString();
form.InnerHtml += inputEmailName.ToString();
This is not an answer but a suggestion. Any reason not to use a Razor helper or Partial for this?
I wrote this in a text editor, so it probably has some incorrect methods but you get the idea:
#helper GenerateFormForContact(string method, string action, bool includeMailTag) {
<form action="#action" method="#method">
#Html.Label("some label")
#Html.Textbox("clientName", null, new { placeholder = "Your name", required = "required" })
#Html.Label("some label")
<input type="email" name="emailName" placeholder="Your mail" required="required" />
</form>
}
Much cleaner IMHO. A Partial would look almost exactly the same except you'd pass in a model or use ViewData.
I want to use string replace to replace the tag {tag:shoppingcart} and in that it would load the user control:
<%# Register TagPrefix="basket" TagName="cart" src="~/controls/basket.ascx" %>
<basket:cart id="test" runat="server"></basket:cart>
I would be defining the controls at the top of the page that needs them.
My question is what is my best way to achieve the following if it is at all possible
string templatehtml;
templatehtml = template[0].Cms;
string newhtml;
newhtml = templatehtml.Replace("{tag_pagecontent}", currentPage[0].Body);
newhtml = templatehtml.Replace("{tag_shoppingcart}", <basket:cart id="test" runat="server"></basket:cart>);
litcontent.Text = newhtml;
It's the <basket:cart code i am having trouble with.
We actually do a very similar thing, except we have placeholder divs on the page.
In the page_init method, we get a reference to the placeholder div, load the user control into the page, and then add the usercontrol to the div's controls.
For example (very rough code):
// Get a reference to the div
Control oUserControlDiv = this.FindControl("divUserControl");
// Load the user control
Control oControl = this.LoadControl("controls/basket.ascx");
oControl.EnableViewState = true;
// Clear the existing control(s) from the div
oUserControlDiv.Controls.Clear();
// And add the new one
oUserControlDiv.Controls.Add(oControl);
Please try this instead:
var basket = new Basket();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb);
using (HtmlTextWriter writer = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
{
basket.RenderControl(writer);
}
string basketHtml = sb.ToString();
newhtml = templatehtml.Replace("{tag_shoppingcart}", basketHtml);