Implementing paging in Sitecore content pages - c#

I have a section on my website where I plan to add a lot of text-based content, and rather than display this all at once it would be nice if I could add paging on just these pages. If possible, I would like to put all of my content within one content item and have the paging work automatically, building a URL along the lines of http://example.org/articles/title?page=2 or similar.
I've stumbled across an article that mentions paging with Sitecore items and this seems rather close to what I require, although mine requires pagination on a single content item, rather than multiple items. Can someone help me adapt this article towards my needs (if it's on the right track of where I should be looking)?
Is it possible to do this with a Sitecore content item?
http://briancaos.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/create-a-google-style-paging-component-in-c/

I think you'd either want to create your own WebControl and define a custom Render() method that reads the query string to write out the correct information, or you could even do it all in a Sublayout (a user control ASCX file). I've done this before by adding in a custom tag in the Rich text editor via Sitecore (I think I used <hr class="page-break" />) then in my ASCX I'd look for that HTML tag and split the content into chunks from that. I think my solution also used jQuery for some of it but you could probably do it with C# too.
Edit:
You'd want to split the tasks up and have the "paged" content as well as a list of pages (like the article you referenced) so you can easily generate the page buttons. Both of these could be done in two separate repeaters.

You can split the text from a single field into the different pages using approach described here: Split html string to page. All you need to do after that - read the query string and display appropriate block.

If I understand you correctly you have an Item in Sitecore that has x number of text fields and you only want a subset of those displayed depending on input in the querystring ?
In it's simplest form you want a sublayout that handles that.
Basically I'd imagine you having fields called Text1, Text2, text3 etc.
This .ascx could then retrieve the data for fields the fields you'd want using the control and adding them.
Then you could use the code from the article to generate the paging links.
This should be simple enough, but I'd say it would be a better idea to have an item in sitecore and use it's children as the data you want viewed and paged.
It's nicer because if you start out with 5 "page" fields and suddenly want 10, your item will keep on growing, where children can be added without bloating the parent page. Plus the user could then order the children how he sees fit.
I hope this helps a bit.

Related

Iterating over Sitecore Placeholder

I've been trying to iterate over a placeholder in sitecore. Essentially, there control that needs to be repeated by the page for a collection of elements (say a tab). I've only gotten the placeholder to render once. The following tabs don't have content inserted into them.
The code for something like what I'm trying to do is:
<asp:Repeater ID="rptTabs" runat="server">
<sc:Placeholder ID="plSocialSharing" runat="server" Key="Social"/>
<sc:Placeholder ID="plTab" runat="server" Key="content"/>
</asp:Repeater>
Should something like what I'm doing work? If it doesn't, do I need to user another sitecore control (something more dynamic?). Should I instead be using user controls I place there, or should I stick with the sitecore framework approach?
Since each of your tabs will contain the same rendering the I would not bother with placeholders. I think you will be adding more complexity than is required.
Assuming you are going to be using the jQuery UI Tab plugin then I would use the same technique you used in the previous question you asked, i.e. render out the content of the div tabs in the repeater, and you will need another repeater to create the ul list of the actual tabs.
Assuming you have a tree structure like:
- Social Sharing
-- Facebook
-- Twitter
-- Email
You could now Social Sharing use as the datasource of your Repeater and still allow the content of the tabs to be editable if you use Sitecore controls.
If you wanted something much more dynamic, like different rendering for each of the tabs, for example one with rich text, one with 2 column, one with table etc, then again there are a couple of ways of achieving this. One way would be to use standard <asp:PlaceHolder> in your repeater and add the rendering in this from your codebehind on ItemDataBound event.
Another option would be to add a bunch of different renderings into the placeholder in the page editor and set the datasource of each to content item. It will be difficult to use jQueryUI Tabs with this though since you would want markup like this in each control to make them self contained:
<div class="tab-title">Tab Title</div>
<div class="tab-content">Put whatever content you want in here</div>
As long as each rendering followed this structure then it would be easy to add several of these to the page and they would still be editable in the Page Editor, albeit listed one after another (not in tab format) in Editing mode. You would need to roll your own tab plugin, but it could be something as simple as:
Only in Preview or Normal mode
Get all .tab-title elements
Create a ul list and prepend to the tab container
Now call jQuery UI Tabs on the element
Hopefully given you some options at least, I can expand on any of these if it something you need but will have to get some code samples together.

Which ASP.NET Control should I use?

I am unsure which asp.net control to use. I've tried / thought about with no avail.
Repeater / ListBox (doesn't allow for multiple lines)
Repeater / Div (No click unless I use JavaScript postback)
I have a list of Messages in codebehind that I would like to attach to some UI control that could display them (spanning multiple lines per item), with good styling.
I need the clickable functionality of a selected item change in a ListBox. But I need the ability to space out each Line item to span multiple lines and possibly contain graphics.
A good visual example would be the inbox view of Microsoft Outlook. Each message consists of the Email-Address, timestamp, etc spaced out and styled nicely. How do I accomplish this with asp.net? :)
You can put a repeater inside another repeater...
That will help you nest multiple elements per row
I typically use KnockoutJS for these types of requirements though since it offers great data bound templates

How to create a testimonials page using Orchard CMS?

I am very new to Orchard CMS and I am working on trying to create a testimonials page in my project.
I have created a content type that holds a body, textfield (TestimonialBy), and tags (for SEO purposes) called Testimonial. Now I need to create a page that will roll up all of my testimonials onto it.
I can create the content for the testimonial, and it is visible via navigating to the testimonial URL, however what I need to do now is create a testimonal page (localhost/testimonials) that will take ALL published testimonials and roll them up on one page so I could have:
Testimonial 1 content
-name of test giver
Testimonial 2 content
-name of test giver
etc
My question is, how do I do this?
You should create a content type like you've already done with the following parts:
Title Part (if you want it to have a title)
Autoroute Part (if you want it to have its own URL)
Body (for content)
Tags
Then enable the projector module.
Then create a query that lists your new content type.
Then create a new projection (or you can also use a projection widget) to show the content items returned by the query.
Updated for Orchard 1.4+
You should start by reading the documentation at Orchard Project, specifically the 'Extending Orchard' section which shows you how to create your own modules and content parts.
You could approach this in a few ways - one would be just edit the HTML of the page that has the testimonials and this is by far the quickest an easiest.
Another way might be to create a testimonial widget that lets you enter a name, quote, description etc. on the widget editor. You could then create a layer with the page's URL as part of the rule and just add widgets to the content zone. Because the widget would be driven by a content part, you could also add testimonials to your pages, blogs, custom content types etc.
Another way might be to write a controller for the admin interface that lets you do CRUD for testimonial records. You could then write a content part which lists these. You can then add this content part to a page, widget etc and with a bit of work add options so that you can control the testimonials that are shown on a per-content part basis.
Ultimately there are many ways to do this sort of thing in Orchard, it just depends on what you need and how much time/effort you want to put in to it.
Hmm. Sounds very close to a blog post. You might be able to create a testimonials blog and fill out the posts with the testimonial content.
Or u could add the containable part to the testimonial contentType and add the testimonials to the list.
Hope that helps
Dan

Filtering Pane, ASP MVC 3

My plan is to create a a two-pane page using ASP MVC 3. The left pane should be a small filter pane and the right the main content, showing a list of objects (say products).
Initially all products will be shown since no filter is applied. When selecting "only red", only red products are shown in the list. When further selecting a price range, only products in that price range will be shown.
Functionally the plan is to implement the filtering pane as a treeview with checkboxes (to be able to drill down to more and more specific filtering options), graphically it will probably be enhanced in some way to improve usability.
What is the best way to implement the coupling between the filter pane and the main list? Everything should work server side, but should of course use javascript (jQuery) when possible for direct feedback.
The simplest way is probably to make it closely coupled solution, calling a specific Asp MVC action using a custom-built javascript (with fallback to a form post). Doable enough, sure, but how to make the solution reusable? Also it would be nice to not loose all filtering data when navigating forward and back, i suppose GET arguments is the only decent way to do that?
Are there any best practices, any guidelines or anything to base this on to make a nice modular structure for filtering.
Victor, I recently had to solved this same problem. I'm not promising it's the best way but it's pretty clear and should even work well in case JavaScript is disabled (who even does that anymore?).
Create a that calls the action with all the field-selectable search options like "only red".
To that same form, add empty, hidden value for the things not directly as fields (paging, sorting...)
Setup your form with the excellent and very easy to use JQuery.Forms (http://www.malsup.com/jquery/form/) to make you form submit via JQuery (all your form values will be passed as JSON on form submit).
Make your back/next/paging/sorting links pass their individual values via query (no-JS fallback) and use JQuery to capture their click events. The JQuery click events on those links should assign the value of the value passed by the link (page number, sort column name...) to the corresponding hidden field in the form and call submit (with thanks to Jquery.Forms will submit via AJAX).
When you configure JQuery.Forms, you can define a callback method. In the callback method take the result (the HTML returned by your action that should contained your filtered+sorted+paged result) and replace the document (or DIV if you used a partial action + view) with that.
The result is a JQuery solution that works when JS is off. You also have very minimal JS code to write other than wiring the event handlers.
I'm not sure if it will be helpful but in MVC 3 you have access to a property called IsAjax from the view so you can do specific things to server a slightly different view when called from AJAX.
Cheers

Repeater Vs String Builder

I think the question may seem a little weird, but here's the details.
The Goal : To retrieve a set of pairs (text, value) for various reasons. one example for that of them is retrieving the alphabet, each letter will be used as an anchor or a LinkButton, the text value will be the letter and the click event will take the value part of the pair and place it in a stringFormat() to form a "Parametrized URL"
I've used two approaches for this goal but I don't know which is better!
1. Using a Repeater
A repeater that will have a LinkButton in it's ItemTemplate and through this blocks and will set the text to the 'text' and using eval and the 'value' to create the QueryString.
2. Using StringBuilder
Create an instance of StringBuilder
Use a loop with a counter equal to the total pairs to be retrieved. and append a certain string format that will build a long string with all the needed anchors for navigation using some code like this
Links_strngBuilder.Append(string.Format("<a href='/data.aspx?page={0}'>{0}</a>", chrctr))
and finally convert the String Builder instance to a string and assign it to a label
Note: the chrctr text and value fields will be retrieved as you suggest [in each loop from the database] or [loaded in an array/arrayList/List<> to store the values and save all those connections to the db]
Where i work we will never use a stringbuild becouse of the designer. We dont want the designer in the codebehind if he has to make a simple change. so keep the markup in the view and codebehind in the codebehind.
Edit
Other advantage of repeater is the change of cycle is much easier. No need to recompile and perhaps redeploy the tweak the UI, just edit the ASPX template, save and refresh.
I don't know anything about how these two approaches perform (in terms of memory usage and speed) comparing to each other but I'd definitely go for Repeater because:
The code is much easier to understand & support
Using a StringBuilder reminds me the days of the classic ASP when the Response.Write was used widely.
You can't use any of the benefits of the Visual Designer with a StringBuilder.
-- Pavel
I think building the output fits more in client side(e.g. when you do an ajax call and want to show the results in html) than server side except when your build a custom server control.
In addition, if you use the repeater you have the extensibility option whenever requirements changed, and you have more control and facilities(like event handling and styling with css and so forth).

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