Last week Michael West asked me about creating shortcuts to restart the Sitecore client and server via this tweet, and I was immediately curious myself on what was needed to accomplish this.

If you are unfamiliar with restarting the Sitecore client and server, these are options that are presented to Sitecore users — typically developers — after installing a package into Sitecore:

Until last week, I never understood how either of these checkboxes worked, and uncovered the following code during my research:

Michael West had conveyed how he wished these two lines of code lived in pipelines, and that prompted me to write this article — basically encapsulate the logic above into two custom pipelines: one to restart the Sitecore client, and the other to restart the Sitecore server.

I decided to define the concept of a ‘Restarter’, an object that restarts something — this could be anything — and defined the following interface for such objects:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters
{
    public interface IRestarter
    {
        void Restart();
    }
}

I then created the following IRestarter for the Sitecore client:

using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters
{
    public class SitecoreClientRestarter : IRestarter
    {
        private ClientResponse ClientResponse { get; set; }

        public SitecoreClientRestarter()
            : this(Context.ClientPage)
        {
        }

        public SitecoreClientRestarter(ClientPage clientPage)
        {
            SetClientResponse(clientPage);
        }

        public SitecoreClientRestarter(ClientResponse clientResponse)
        {
            SetClientResponse(clientResponse);
        }

        private void SetClientResponse(ClientPage clientPage)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(clientPage, "clientPage");
            SetClientResponse(clientPage.ClientResponse);
        }

        private void SetClientResponse(ClientResponse clientResponse)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(clientResponse, "clientResponse");
            ClientResponse = clientResponse;
        }

        public void Restart()
        {
            ClientResponse.Broadcast(ClientResponse.SetLocation(string.Empty), "Shell");
        }
    }
}

The class above has three constructors. One constructor takes an instance of Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer.ClientResponse — this lives in Sitecore.Kernel.dll — and another constructor takes in an instance of
Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer.ClientPage — this also lives in Sitecore.Kernel.dll — which contains a property instance of Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer.ClientResponse, and this instance is set on the ClientResponse property of the SitecoreClientRestarter class.

The third constructor — which is parameterless — calls the constructor that takes in a Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer.ClientPage instance, and passes the ClientResponse instance set in Sitecore.Context.

I followed building the above class with another IRestarter — one that restarts the Sitecore server:

using Sitecore.Install;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters
{
    public class SitecoreServerRestarter : IRestarter
    {
        public SitecoreServerRestarter()
        {
        }

        public void Restart()
        {
            Installer.RestartServer();
        }
    }
}

There really isn’t much happening in the class above. It just calls the static method RestartServer() — this method changes the timestamp on the Sitecore instance’s Web.config to trigger a web application restart — on Sitecore.Install.Installer in Sitecore.Kernel.dll.

Now we need to a way to use the IRestarter classes above. I built the following class to serve as a processor of custom pipelines I define later on in this post:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RestartRestarter
{
    public class RestartRestarterOperations
    {
        private IRestarter Restarter { get; set; }

        public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(Restarter, "Restarter");
            Restarter.Restart();
        }
    }
}

Through a pipeline processor configuration setting, we define the type of IRestarter — it’s magically created by Sitecore when the pipeline processor instance is created.

After some null checks, the Process() method invokes Restart() on the IRestarter instance, ultimately restarting whatever the IRestarter is set to restart.

I then needed a way to test the pipelines I define later on in this post. I built the following class to serve as commands that I added into the Sitecore ribbon:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Commands.Admin
{
    public class Restart : Command
    {
        public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.Parameters, "context.Parameters");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(context.Parameters["pipeline"], "context.Parameters[\"pipeline\"]");
            CorePipeline.Run(context.Parameters["pipeline"], new PipelineArgs());
        }
    }
}

The command above expects a pipeline name to be supplied via the Parameters NameValueCollection instance set on the CommandContext instance passed to the Execute method() — I show later on in this post how I pass the name of the pipeline to the command.

If the pipeline name is given, we invoke the pipeline.

I then glued everything together using the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="admin:Restart" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Commands.Admin.Restart, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
    </commands>
    <pipelines>
      <restartClient>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RestartRestarter.RestartRestarterOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <Restarter type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters.SitecoreClientRestarter, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
        </processor>  
      </restartClient>
      <restartServer>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RestartRestarter.RestartRestarterOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <Restarter type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Restarters.SitecoreServerRestarter, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
        </processor>
      </restartServer>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

I’m omitting how I created custom buttons in a custom ribbon in Sitecore to test this. If you want to learn about adding buttons to the Sitecore Ribbon, please read John West’s blog post on doing so.

However, I did do the following to pass the name of the pipeline we want to invoke in the custom command class defined above:

I wish I could show you some screenshots on how this works. However, there really isn’t much visual to see here.

If you have any suggestions on how I could show this in action, or improve the code above, please share in a comment.

Every so often I find myself having to delete all Sitecore items in a folder except for one — the reason for this eludes me at the moment, but it does make an appearance once in a while (if this also happens to you, and you remember the context for why it happens, please share in a comment) — and it feels like it takes ages to delete all of these items: I have to step through all of these items in the Sitecore content tree, and delete each individually .

When this happens I usually say to myself “wouldn’t it be cool to have something like the ‘Close All But This’ feature found in Visual Studio?”:

I always forget to write this idea down, but did remember it a couple of days ago, and decided to build something to save time when deleting all items in a folder except for one.

To delete all items in a folder, we need a way to get all sibling items, and exclude the item we don’t want to delete. I decided to create a custom pipeline to do this, and defined the following parameter object for it:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings
{
    public class GetSiblingsArgs : PipelineArgs
    {
        public Item Item { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<Item> Siblings { get; set; } 
    }
}

Now that we have the parameter object defined, we need a class with methods that will compose our custom pipeline for grabbing sibling items in Sitecore. The following class does the trick:

using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings
{
    public class GetSiblingsOperations
    {
        public void EnsureItem(GetSiblingsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (args.Item == null)
            {
                args.AbortPipeline();
            }
        }

        public void GetSiblings(GetSiblingsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Item, "args.Item");
            args.Siblings = (from sibling in args.Item.Parent.GetChildren()
                             where sibling.ID != args.Item.ID
                             select sibling).ToList();
        }
    }
}

The EnsureItem() method above just makes sure the item instance passed to it isn’t null, and aborts the pipeline if it is.

The GetSiblings() method gets all siblings items of the item — it just grabs all children of its parent, and excludes the item in question from the resulting collection using LINQ.

Now that we have a way to get sibling items, we need a way to delete them. I decided to build another custom pipeline to get sibling items for an item — by leveraging the pipeline created above — and delete them, and created the following parameter object for it:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings
{
    public class DeleteSiblingsArgs : ClientPipelineArgs
    {
        public Item Item { get; set; }

        public bool ShouldDelete { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<Item> Siblings { get; set; } 
    }
}

The following class contains methods that will be used it our custom client pipeline to delete sibling items:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings
{
    public class DeleteSiblingsOperations
    {
        private string DeleteConfirmationMessage { get; set; }
        private string DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth { get; set; }
        private string DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight { get; set; }

        public void ConfirmDeleteAction(DeleteSiblingsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(DeleteConfirmationMessage, "DeleteConfirmationMessage");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth, "DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight, "DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight");
            if (!args.IsPostBack)
            {
                SheerResponse.YesNoCancel(DeleteConfirmationMessage, DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth, DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight);
                args.WaitForPostBack();
            }
            else if (args.HasResult)
            {
                args.ShouldDelete = AreEqualIgnoreCase(args.Result, "yes");
                args.IsPostBack = false;
            }
        }

        public void GetSiblingsIfConfirmed(DeleteSiblingsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (!args.ShouldDelete)
            {
                args.AbortPipeline();
                return;
            }
            
            args.Siblings = GetSiblings(args.Item);
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<Item> GetSiblings(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            GetSiblingsArgs getSiblingsArgs = new GetSiblingsArgs { Item = item };
            CorePipeline.Run("getSiblings", getSiblingsArgs);
            return getSiblingsArgs.Siblings;
        }

        public void DeleteSiblings(DeleteSiblingsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Siblings, "args.Siblings");
            DeleteItems(args.Siblings);
        }

        protected virtual void DeleteItems(IEnumerable<Item> items)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(items, "items");
            foreach (Item item in items)
            {
                item.Recycle();
            }
        }

        private static bool AreEqualIgnoreCase(string one, string two)
        {
            return string.Equals(one, two, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        }
    }
}

The ConfirmDeleteAction() method — which is invoked first in the custom client pipeline — asks the user if he/she would like to delete all sibling items for the item in question.

The GetSiblingsIfConfirmed() method is then processed next in the pipeline sequence, and ascertains whether the user had clicked the ‘Yes’ button — this is a button in the YesNoCancel dialog that was presented to the user via the ConfirmDeleteAction() method.

If the user had clicked the ‘Yes’ button, sibling items are grabbed from Sitecore — this is done using the custom pipeline built above — and is set on Siblings property of the DeleteSiblingsArgs instance.

The DeleteSiblings() method is then processed next, and basically does as named: it deletes all items in the Siblings property of the DeleteSiblingsArgs instance.

Now that we are armed with our pipelines above, we need a way to call them from the Sitecore UI. The following command was built for that purpose:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings;
using Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Commands
{
    public class DeleteAllButThis : Command
    {
        public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            DeleteSiblings(context);
        }

        private static void DeleteSiblings(CommandContext context)
        {
            Context.ClientPage.Start("uiDeleteSiblings", new DeleteSiblingsArgs { Item = GetItem(context) });
        }

        public override CommandState QueryState(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            if (!HasSiblings(GetItem(context)))
            {
                return CommandState.Hidden;
            }

            return CommandState.Enabled;
        }

        private static bool HasSiblings(Item item)
        {
            return GetSiblings(item).Any();
        }

        private static IEnumerable<Item> GetSiblings(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            GetSiblingsArgs getSiblingsArgs = new GetSiblingsArgs { Item = item };
            CorePipeline.Run("getSiblings", getSiblingsArgs);
            return getSiblingsArgs.Siblings;
        }

        private static Item GetItem(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.Items, "context.Items");
            return context.Items.FirstOrDefault();
        }
    }
}

The command above will only display if the context item has siblings — we invoke the pipeline defined towards the beginning of this post to get sibling items. If none are returned, the command is hidden.

When the command executes, we basically just pass the context item to our custom pipeline that deletes sibling items, and sit back and wait for them to be deleted (I just lean back, and put my feet up on my desk).

I then strung everything together using the following configuration include file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="item:DeleteAllButThis" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Commands.DeleteAllButThis, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
    </commands>
    <pipelines>
      <getSiblings>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings.GetSiblingsOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="EnsureItem" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetSiblings.GetSiblingsOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="GetSiblings" />
      </getSiblings>
    </pipelines>
    <processors>
      <uiDeleteSiblings>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings.DeleteSiblingsOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="ConfirmDeleteAction">
          <DeleteConfirmationMessage>Are you sure you want to delete all sibling items and their descendants?</DeleteConfirmationMessage>
          <DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth>200</DeleteConfirmationWindowWidth>
          <DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight>200</DeleteConfirmationWindowHeight>
        </processor>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings.DeleteSiblingsOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="GetSiblingsIfConfirmed"/>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Pipelines.DeleteSiblings.DeleteSiblingsOperations, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="DeleteSiblings"/>
	    </uiDeleteSiblings>
    </processors>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

I also had to wire the command above to the Sitecore UI by defining a context menu item in the core database. I’ve omitted how I’ve done this. If you would like to learn how to do this, check out my first and second posts on adding to the item context menu.

Let’s see this in action.

I first created some items to delete, and one item that I don’t want to delete:

I then right-clicked on the item I don’t want to delete, and was presented with the new item context menu option:

I was then prompted with a confirmation dialog:

I clicked ‘Yes’, and then saw that all sibling items were deleted:

If you have any suggestions on making this better, please drop a comment.

Until next time, have a Sitecoretastic day!

In a previous post I showed a solution that uses the Composite design pattern in an attempt to answer the following question by Sitecore MVP Kyle Heon:

So using #Sitecore IDTable is per database. What is the best way to sync custom url mappings from master to web? #SitecoreScrum—
Kyle Heon (@kyleheon) February 24, 2014

Although I enjoyed building that solution, it isn’t ideal for synchronizing IDTable entries across multiple Sitecore databases — entries are added to all configured IDTables even when Items might not exist in all databases of those IDTables (e.g. the Sitecore Items have not been published to those databases).

I came up with another solution to avoid the aforementioned problem — one that synchronizes IDTable entries using a custom <publishItem> pipeline processor, and the following class contains code for that processor:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.IDTables;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Publishing.Pipelines.PublishItem;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.Publishing
{
    public class SynchronizeIDTables : PublishItemProcessor
    {
        private IEnumerable<string> _IDTablePrefixes;
        private IEnumerable<string> IDTablePrefixes
        {
            get
            {
                if (_IDTablePrefixes == null)
                {
                    _IDTablePrefixes = GetIDTablePrefixes();
                }

                return _IDTablePrefixes;
            }
        }

        private string IDTablePrefixesConfigPath { get; set; }

        public override void Process(PublishItemContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.PublishOptions, "context.PublishOptions");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.PublishOptions.SourceDatabase, "context.PublishOptions.SourceDatabase");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.PublishOptions.TargetDatabase, "context.PublishOptions.TargetDatabase");
            IDTableProvider sourceProvider = CreateNewIDTableProvider(context.PublishOptions.SourceDatabase);
            IDTableProvider targetProvider = CreateNewIDTableProvider(context.PublishOptions.TargetDatabase);
            RemoveEntries(targetProvider, GetAllEntries(targetProvider, context.ItemId));
            AddEntries(targetProvider, GetAllEntries(sourceProvider, context.ItemId));
        }

        protected virtual IDTableProvider CreateNewIDTableProvider(Database database)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(database, "database");
            return Factory.CreateObject(string.Format("IDTable[@id='{0}']", database.Name), true) as IDTableProvider;
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> GetAllEntries(IDTableProvider provider, ID itemId)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(provider, "provider");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(!ID.IsNullOrEmpty(itemId), "itemId", "itemId cannot be null or empty!");
            List<IDTableEntry> entries = new List<IDTableEntry>();
            foreach(string prefix in IDTablePrefixes)
            {
                IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> entriesForPrefix = provider.GetKeys(prefix, itemId);
                if (entriesForPrefix.Any())
                {
                    entries.AddRange(entriesForPrefix);
                }
            }

            return entries;
        }

        private static void RemoveEntries(IDTableProvider provider, IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> entries)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(provider, "provider");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(entries, "entries");
            foreach (IDTableEntry entry in entries)
            {
                provider.Remove(entry.Prefix, entry.Key);
            }
        }

        private static void AddEntries(IDTableProvider provider, IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> entries)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(provider, "provider");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(entries, "entries");
            foreach (IDTableEntry entry in entries)
            {
                provider.Add(entry);
            }
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<string> GetIDTablePrefixes()
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(IDTablePrefixesConfigPath, "IDTablePrefixConfigPath");
            return Factory.GetStringSet(IDTablePrefixesConfigPath);
        }
    }
}

The Process method above grabs all IDTable entries for all defined IDTable prefixes — these are pulled from the configuration file that is shown later on in this post — from the source database for the Item being published, and pushes them all to the target database after deleting all preexisting entries from the target database for the Item (the code is doing a complete overwrite for the Item’s IDTable entries in the target database).

I also added the following code to serve as an item:deleted event handler (if you would like to learn more about events and their handlers, check out John West‘s post about them, and also take a look at this page on the
Sitecore Developer Network (SDN)) to remove entries for the Item when it’s being deleted:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Events;
using Sitecore.Data.IDTables;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Events;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Data.IDTables
{
    public class ItemEventHandler
    {
        private IEnumerable<string> _IDTablePrefixes;
        private IEnumerable<string> IDTablePrefixes
        {
            get
            {
                if (_IDTablePrefixes == null)
                {
                    _IDTablePrefixes = GetIDTablePrefixes();
                }

                return _IDTablePrefixes;
            }
        }

        private string IDTablePrefixesConfigPath { get; set; }

        protected void OnItemDeleted(object sender, EventArgs args)
        {
            if (args == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            Item item = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 0) as Item;
            if (item == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            DeleteItemEntries(item);
        }

        private void DeleteItemEntries(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            IDTableProvider provider = CreateNewIDTableProvider(item.Database.Name);
            foreach (IDTableEntry entry in GetAllEntries(provider, item.ID))
            {
                provider.Remove(entry.Prefix, entry.Key);
            }
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> GetAllEntries(IDTableProvider provider, ID itemId)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(provider, "provider");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(!ID.IsNullOrEmpty(itemId), "itemId", "itemId cannot be null or empty!");
            List<IDTableEntry> entries = new List<IDTableEntry>();
            foreach (string prefix in IDTablePrefixes)
            {
                IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> entriesForPrefix = provider.GetKeys(prefix, itemId);
                if (entriesForPrefix.Any())
                {
                    entries.AddRange(entriesForPrefix);
                }
            }

            return entries;
        }

        private static void RemoveEntries(IDTableProvider provider, IEnumerable<IDTableEntry> entries)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(provider, "provider");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(entries, "entries");
            foreach (IDTableEntry entry in entries)
            {
                provider.Remove(entry.Prefix, entry.Key);
            }
        }

        protected virtual IDTableProvider CreateNewIDTableProvider(string databaseName)
        {
            return Factory.CreateObject(string.Format("IDTable[@id='{0}']", databaseName), true) as IDTableProvider;
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<string> GetIDTablePrefixes()
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(IDTablePrefixesConfigPath, "IDTablePrefixConfigPath");
            return Factory.GetStringSet(IDTablePrefixesConfigPath);
        }
    }
}

The above code retrieves all IDTable entries for the Item being deleted — filtered by the configuration defined IDTable prefixes — from its database’s IDTable, and calls the Remove method on the IDTableProvider instance that is created for the Item’s database for each entry.

I then registered all of the above in Sitecore using the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <events>
      <event name="item:deleted">
        <handler type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Data.IDTables.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="OnItemDeleted">
          <IDTablePrefixesConfigPath>IDTablePrefixes/IDTablePrefix</IDTablePrefixesConfigPath>
        </handler>
      </event>
    </events>
    <IDTable type="Sitecore.Data.$(database).$(database)IDTable, Sitecore.Kernel" singleInstance="true">
      <patch:attribute name="id">master</patch:attribute>
      <param connectionStringName="master"/>
      <param desc="cacheSize">500KB</param>
    </IDTable>
    <IDTable id="web" type="Sitecore.Data.$(database).$(database)IDTable, Sitecore.Kernel" singleInstance="true">
      <param connectionStringName="web"/>
      <param desc="cacheSize">500KB</param>
    </IDTable>
    <IDTablePrefixes>
      <IDTablePrefix>IDTableTest</IDTablePrefix>
    </IDTablePrefixes>
    <pipelines>
      <publishItem>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.Publishing.SynchronizeIDTables, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <IDTablePrefixesConfigPath>IDTablePrefixes/IDTablePrefix</IDTablePrefixesConfigPath>
        </processor>
      </publishItem>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

For testing, I quickly whipped up a web form to add a couple of IDTable entries using an IDTableProvider for the master database — I am omitting that code for brevity — and ran a query to verify the entries were added into the IDTable in my master database (I also ran another query for the IDTable in my web database to show that it contains no entries):

I published both items, and queried the IDTable in the master and web databases:

As you can see, both entries were inserted into the web database’s IDTable.

I then deleted one of the items from the master database via the Sitecore Content Editor:

It was removed from the IDTable in the master database.

I then published the deleted item’s parent with subitems:

As you can see, it was removed from the IDTable in the web database.

If you have any suggestions for making this code better, or have another solution for synchronizing IDTable entries across multiple Sitecore databases, please share in a comment.

Earlier today when doing research for another blog post around on-demand language translation in Sitecore, I remembered I wanted to blog about an issue I saw a while back when using the Sitecore Dictionary, but before I dive into that issue — and a possible approach for resolving it — let me give you a little information on what the Sitecore Dictionary is, and why you might want to use it — actually you probably should use it!

The Sitecore Dictionary is a place in Sitecore where you can store multilingual content for labels or string literals in your code (this could be front-end code, or even content displayed in the Sitecore shell). I’ve created the following Dictionary entry as an example:

The “coffee” item above is the Dictionary entry, and its parent item “beverage types” is a Dictionary folder.

You could use a sublayout like the following to display the text stored in the Phrase field on the front-end of your website:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Translate Test.ascx.cs" Inherits="Sandbox.layouts.sublayouts.Translate_Test" %>
<h2>Dictionary Test</h2>
Key => <asp:Literal ID="litKey" runat="server" /><br />
Phrase => <asp:Literal ID="litTranslateTest" runat="server" />

The code-behind of the sublayout:

using System;

using Sitecore.Globalization;

namespace Sandbox.layouts.sublayouts
{
    public partial class Translate_Test : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string key = "beveragetypes.coffee";
            litKey.Text = key;
            litTranslateTest.Text = Translate.Text(key);
        }
    }
}

In the Page_Load method above, I’ve invoked Sitecore.Globalization.Translate.Text() to grab the value out of the Phrase field of the “coffee” Dictionary entry using its key. The Sitecore.Globalization.Translate.Text() method uses Sitecore.Context.Language to ascertain which language version of the Dictionary entry to use.

When I navigated to the page that has the sublayout above mapped to its presentation, I see the “coffee” entry’s Phrase appear:

Let’s see how this works using another language version of this Dictionary entry. I added a Danish version for our “coffee” entry:

I navigated to my page again after embedding the Danish language code in its URL to get the Danish version of this Dictionary entry:

As you can see the Danish version appeared, and I did not have to write any additional code to make this happen.

Well, this is great and all until someone forgets to include a phrase for a Dictionary entry:

When we go to the front-end, we see that the Dictionary entry’s key appears instead of its phrase:

As a fix for this, I created the following class to serve as a processor for the <getTranslation> pipeline (this pipeline was introduced in Sitecore 6.6):

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.GetTranslation;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetTranslation
{
    public class SetAsEmpty
    {
        private IList<string> _KeyPrefixes;
        private IList<string> KeyPrefixes 
        {
            get
            {
                if (_KeyPrefixes == null)
                {
                    _KeyPrefixes = new List<string>();
                }

                return _KeyPrefixes;
            }
        }

        public void Process(GetTranslationArgs args)
        {
            if (!ShouldSetAsEmpty(args))
            {
                return;
            }

            args.Result = string.Empty;
        }

        protected virtual bool ShouldSetAsEmpty(GetTranslationArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            return args.Result == null && HasKeyPrefix(args.Key);
        }

        protected virtual bool HasKeyPrefix(string key)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(key))
            {
                return false;
            }

            foreach (string keyPrefix in KeyPrefixes)
            {
                if (key.StartsWith(keyPrefix))
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }

            return false;
        }

        protected virtual void AddKeyPrefix(string keyPrefix)
        {
            if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(keyPrefix))
            {
                return;
            }

            KeyPrefixes.Add(keyPrefix);
        }
    }
}

The idea here is to check to see if the Dictionary entry’s key starts with a configuration defined prefix, and if it does, set the GetTranslationArgs instance’s Result property to the empty string when it’s null.

The reason why we check for a specific prefix is to ensure we don’t impact other parts of Sitecore that use methods that leverage the <getTranslation> pipeline (I learned this the hard way when virtually all labels in my instance’s Content Editor disappeared before adding the logic above to check whether a Dictionary entry’s key started with a config defined prefix).

I then wired this up in Sitecore using the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <getTranslation>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetTranslation.SetAsEmpty, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <keyPrefixes hint="list:AddKeyPrefix">
            <prefix>beveragetypes.</prefix>
          </keyPrefixes>
        </processor>
      </getTranslation>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

When I navigated back to my page, I see that nothing appears for the Dictionary entry’s phrase since it was set to the empty string by our pipeline processor above.

One thing I should note: I have only tested this in Sitecore 6.6, and I’m not aware if this Dictionary entry issue exists in Sitecore 7. If this issue was fixed in Sitecore 7, please share in a comment.

Plus, if you have any comments on this, or other ideas for solving this problem, please leave a comment.

In a previous post, I showcased a “proof of concept” for shortcodes in Sitecore — this is a shorthand notation for embedding things like YouTube videos in your webpages without having to type up a bunch of HTML — and felt I should follow up with another “proof of concept” around incorporating Embedded Tweets in Sitecore.

You might be asking “what’s an Embedded Tweet?” An Embedded Tweet is basically the process of pasting a Tweet URL from Twitter into an editable content area of your website/blog/whatever (think Rich Text field in Sitecore), and let the code that builds the HTML for your site figure out how to display it.

For example, I had used an Embedded Tweet in a recent post:

This is what is seen on the rendered page:

While doing some research via Google on how to do this in Sitecore, I found this page from Twitter that discusses how you could go about accomplishing this, and discovered how to get JSON containing information about a Tweet — including its HTML — using one of Twitter’s API URLs:

The JSON above drove me to build the following POCO class to represent data returned by that URL:

using System.Runtime.Serialization;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RenderField.Tweets
{
    public class Tweet
    {
        [DataMember(Name = "cache_age")]
        public int CacheAgeMilliseconds { get; set; }

        [DataMember(Name = "url")]
        public string Url { get; set; }

        [DataMember(Name = "html")]
        public string Html { get; set; }
    }
}

I decided to omit some of the JSON properties returned by the Twitter URL from my class above — width and height are examples — since I felt I did not need to use them for this “proof of concept”.

I then leveraged the class above in the following class that will serve as a <renderField> pipeline processor to embed Tweets:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Web;

using Sitecore.Caching;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField;

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RenderField.Tweets
{
    public class ExpandTweets
    {
        private string TwitterWidgetScriptTag {get ; set; }

        private string TwitterApiUrlFormat { get; set; }

        private string _TweetPattern;
        private string TweetPattern 
        {
            get
            {
                return _TweetPattern;
            }
            set
            {
                _TweetPattern = value;
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(_TweetPattern))
                {
                    _TweetPattern = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(_TweetPattern);
                }
            }
        }

        private HtmlCache _HtmlCache;
        private HtmlCache HtmlCache
        {
            get
            {
                if (_HtmlCache == null)
                {
                    _HtmlCache = CacheManager.GetHtmlCache(Context.Site);
                }

                return _HtmlCache;
            }
        }

        public void Process(RenderFieldArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            AssertRequired();
            if(!ShouldFieldBeProcessed(args))
            {
                return;
            }

            args.Result.FirstPart = ExpandTweetUrls(args.Result.FirstPart);
        }

        private static bool ShouldFieldBeProcessed(RenderFieldArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.FieldTypeKey, "args.FieldTypeKey");
            string fieldTypeKey = args.FieldTypeKey.ToLower();
            return fieldTypeKey == "text"
                    || fieldTypeKey == "rich text"
                    || fieldTypeKey == "single-line text"
                    || fieldTypeKey == "multi-line text";
        }

        private void AssertRequired()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(TwitterWidgetScriptTag, "TwitterWidgetScriptTag must be set! Check your configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(TwitterApiUrlFormat, "TwitterApiUrlFormat must be set! Check your configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(TweetPattern, "TweetPattern must be set! Check your configuration!");
        }

        protected virtual string ExpandTweetUrls(string html)
        {
            string htmlExpanded = html;
            MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(htmlExpanded, TweetPattern, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
            foreach (Match match in matches)
            {
                string tweetHtml = GetTweetHtml(match.Groups["id"].Value);
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(tweetHtml))
                {
                    htmlExpanded = htmlExpanded.Replace(match.Value, tweetHtml);
                }
            }

            if (matches.Count > 0)
            {
                htmlExpanded = string.Concat(htmlExpanded, TwitterWidgetScriptTag);
            }

            return htmlExpanded;
        }

        protected virtual string GetTweetHtml(string id)
        {
            string html = GetTweetHtmlFromCache(id);
            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(html))
            {
                return html;
            }

            Tweet tweet = GetTweetFromApi(id);
            AddTweetHtmlToCache(id, tweet);
            return tweet.Html;
        }

        private string GetTweetHtmlFromCache(string id)
        {
            return HtmlCache.GetHtml(id);
        }

        private void AddTweetHtmlToCache(string id, Tweet tweet)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(tweet.Html))
            {
                return;
            }

            if (tweet.CacheAgeMilliseconds > 0)
            {
                HtmlCache.SetHtml(id, tweet.Html, DateTime.Now.AddMilliseconds(tweet.CacheAgeMilliseconds));
                return;
            }

            HtmlCache.SetHtml(id, tweet.Html);
        }

        protected virtual Tweet GetTweetFromApi(string id)
        {
            HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(string.Format(TwitterApiUrlFormat, id));
            try
            {
                HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
                using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
                {
                    var result = reader.ReadToEnd();
                    JObject jObject = JObject.Parse(result);
                    return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Tweet>(jObject.ToString());
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Log.Error(this.ToString(), ex, this);
            }

            return new Tweet { Html = string.Empty };
        }
    }
}

Methods in the class above find all Tweet URLs in the Rich Text, Single-Line Text, or Multi-Line Text field being processed — the code determines if it’s a Tweet URL based on a pattern that is supplied by a configuration setting (you will see this below in this post); extract Tweets’ Twitter identifiers (these are located at the end of the Tweet URLs); and attempt to find the Tweets’ HTML in Sitecore’s HTML cache.

If the HTML is found in cache for a Tweet, we return it. Otherwise, we make a request to Twitter’s API to get it, put it in cache one we have it (it is set to expire after a specified number of milliseconds from the time it was retrieved: Twitter returns the number of milliseconds in one full year by default), and then we return it.

If the returned HTML is not empty, we replace it in the field’s value for display.

If the HTML returned is empty — this could happen when an exception is encountered during the Twitter API call (of course we log the exception in the Sitecore log when this happens ;) ) — we don’t touch the Tweet URL in the field’s value.

Once all Tweet URLs have been processed, we append a script tag referencing Twitter’s widget.js file — this is supplied through a configuration setting, and it does the heavy lifting on making the Tweet HTML look Twitterific ;) — to the field’s rendered HTML.

I then tied everything together using the following patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <renderField>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RenderField.Tweets.ExpandTweets, Sitecore.Sandbox"
					patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetTextFieldValue, Sitecore.Kernel']">
          <TwitterWidgetScriptTag>&lt;script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</TwitterWidgetScriptTag>
          <TwitterApiUrlFormat>https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/oembed.json?id={0}&amp;omit_script=true</TwitterApiUrlFormat>
          <TweetPattern>https://twitter.com/.+/status/(?&lt;id&gt;\d*)</TweetPattern>
        </processor>
      </renderField>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s see this in action!

I created a test Item, and added some legitimate and bogus Tweet URLs into one of its Rich Text fields (please pardon the grammatical issues in the following screenshots :-/):

This isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing HTML, but it will serve its purpose for testing:

After saving and publishing, I navigated to my test Item’s page, and saw this:

If you have any suggestions on making this better, or have other ideas for embedding Tweets in Sitecore, please share in a comment.

Last week my friend and colleague Greg Coffman had asked me if I knew of a way to restrict IP access to directories within the Sitecore web application, and I recalled reading a post by Alex Shyba quite some time ago.

Although Alex’s solution is probably good enough in most circumstances, I decided to explore other solutions, and came up with the following <httpRequestBegin> pipeline processor as another way to accomplish this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Hosting;

using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest;
using Sitecore.Web;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.HttpRequest
{
    public class FilePathRestrictor : HttpRequestProcessor 
    {
        public override void Process(HttpRequestArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (!ShouldRedirect(args))
            {
                return;
            }

            RedirectToNoAccessUrl();
        }

        private bool ShouldRedirect(HttpRequestArgs args)
        {
            return CanProcess(args, GetFilePath(args)) 
                    && !CanAccess(args.Context.Request.UserHostAddress);
        }

        protected virtual string GetFilePath(HttpRequestArgs args)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Context.Page.FilePath))
            {
                return args.Url.FilePath;
            }

            return Context.Page.FilePath;
        }

        protected virtual bool CanProcess(HttpRequestArgs args, string filePath)
        {
            return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(filePath)
                    && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(RootFilePath)
                    && AllowedIPs != null
                    && AllowedIPs.Any()
                    && (HostingEnvironment.VirtualPathProvider.DirectoryExists(filePath)
                        || HostingEnvironment.VirtualPathProvider.FileExists(filePath))
                    && args.Url.FilePath.StartsWith(RootFilePath, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
                    && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(args.Context.Request.UserHostAddress)
                    && !string.Equals(filePath, Settings.NoAccessUrl, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        }

        protected virtual bool CanAccess(string ip)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(ip, "ip");
            return AllowedIPs.Contains(ip);
        }

        protected virtual void RedirectToNoAccessUrl()
        {
            WebUtil.Redirect(Settings.NoAccessUrl);
        }

        protected virtual void AddAllowedIP(string ip)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ip) || AllowedIPs.Contains(ip))
            {
                return;
            }

            AllowedIPs.Add(ip);
        }

        private string RootFilePath { get; set; }

        private IList<string> _AllowedIPs;
        private IList<string> AllowedIPs 
        {
            get
            {
                if (_AllowedIPs == null)
                {
                    _AllowedIPs = new List<string>();
                }

                return _AllowedIPs;
            }
        }
    }
}

The pipeline processor above determines whether the IP making the request has access to the directory or file on the file system — a list of IP addresses that should have access are passed to the pipeline processor via a configuration file, and the code does check to see if the requested URL is a directory or a file on the file system — by matching the beginning of the URL with a configuration defined root path.

If the user does not have access to the requested path, s/he is redirected to the “No Access Url” which is specified in the Sitecore instance’s configuration.

The list of IP addresses that should have access to the directory — including everything within it — and the root path are handed to the pipeline processor via the following patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <httpRequestBegin>
        <processor patch:before=" processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.FileResolver, Sitecore.Kernel']"
                   type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.HttpRequest.FilePathRestrictor, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <RootFilePath>/sitecore</RootFilePath>
          <AllowedIPs hint="list:AddAllowedIP">
            <IP>127.0.0.2</IP>
          </AllowedIPs>
        </processor>
      </httpRequestBegin>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Since my IP is 127.0.0.1, I decided to only allow 127.0.0.2 access to my Sitecore directory — this also includes everything within it — in the above configuration file for testing.

After navigating to /sitecore of my local sandbox instance, I was redirected to the “No Access Url” page defined in my Web.config:

If you have any thoughts on this, or know of other solutions, please share in a comment.

The other day I was poking around Sitecore.Forms.Core.dll — this is one of the assemblies that comes with Web Forms for Marketers (what, you don’t randomly look at code in the Sitecore assemblies? ;) ) — and decided to check out how the export functionality of the Form Reports work.

Once I felt I understood how the export code functions, I decided to take a stab at building my own custom export: functionality to export to CSV, and built the following class to serve as a pipeline processor to wedge Form Reports data into CSV format:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Form.Core.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Form.Core.Pipelines.Export;
using Sitecore.Forms.Data;
using Sitecore.Jobs;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Form.Core.Pipelines.Export.Csv
{
    public class ExportToCsv
    {
        public void Process(ExportArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            LogInfo();
            args.Result = GenerateCsv(args.Packet.Entries);
        }

        protected virtual void LogInfo()
        {
            Job job = Context.Job;
            if (job != null)
            {
                job.Status.LogInfo(ResourceManager.Localize("EXPORTING_DATA"));
            }
        }

        private string GenerateCsv(IEnumerable<IForm> forms)
        {
            return string.Join(Environment.NewLine, GenerateAllCsvRows(forms));
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<string> GenerateAllCsvRows(IEnumerable<IForm> forms)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(forms, "forms");
            IList<string> rows = new List<string>();
            rows.Add(GenerateCsvHeader(forms.FirstOrDefault()));
            foreach (IForm form in forms)
            {
                string row = GenerateCsvRow(form);
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(row))
                {
                    rows.Add(row);
                }
            }

            return rows;
        }

        protected virtual string GenerateCsvHeader(IForm form)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(form, "form");
            return string.Join(",", form.Field.Select(field => field.FieldName));
        }

        protected virtual string GenerateCsvRow(IForm form)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(form, "form");
            return string.Join(",", form.Field.Select(field => field.Value));
        }
    }
}

There really isn’t anything magical happening in the code above. The code creates a string of comma-separated values for each row of entries in args.Packet.Entries, and puts these plus a CSV header into a collection of strings.

Once all rows have been placed into a collection of strings, they are munged together on the newline character ultimately creating a multi-row CSV string. This CSV string is then set on the Result property of the ExportArgs instance.

Now we need a way to invoke a pipeline that contains the above class as a processor, and the following command does just that:

using System.Collections.Specialized;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Forms.Core.Commands.Export;
using Sitecore.Form.Core.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Forms.Core.Commands.Export
{
    public class Export : ExportToXml
    {
        protected override void AddParameters(NameValueCollection parameters)
        {
            parameters["filename"] = FileName;
            parameters["contentType"] = MimeType;
        }

        public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
        {
            SetProperties(context);
            base.Execute(context);
        }

        private void SetProperties(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context.Parameters, "context.Parameters");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(context.Parameters["fileName"], "context.Parameters[\"fileName\"]");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(context.Parameters["mimeType"], "context.Parameters[\"mimeType\"]");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(context.Parameters["exportPipeline"], "context.Parameters[\"exportPipeline\"]");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(context.Parameters["progressDialogTitle"], "context.Parameters[\"progressDialogTitle\"]");
            FileName = context.Parameters["fileName"];
            MimeType = context.Parameters["mimeType"];
            ExportPipeline = context.Parameters["exportPipeline"];
            ProgressDialogTitle = context.Parameters["progressDialogTitle"];
        }

        protected override string GetName()
        {
            return ProgressDialogTitle;
        }

        protected override string GetProcessorName()
        {
            return ExportPipeline;
        }

        private string FileName { get; set; }

        private string MimeType { get; set; }

        private string ExportPipeline { get; set; }

        private string ProgressDialogTitle { get; set; }
    }
}

I modeled the above command after Sitecore.Forms.Core.Commands.Export.ExportToExcel in Sitecore.Forms.Core.dll: this command inherits some useful logic of Sitecore.Forms.Core.Commands.Export.ExportToXml but differs along the pipeline being invoked, the name of the export file, and content type of the file being created.

I decided to make the above command be generic: the name of the file, pipeline, progress dialog title — this is a heading that is displayed in a modal dialog that is launched when the data is being exported from the Form Reports — and content type of the file are passed to it from Sitecore via Sheer UI buttons (see below).

I then registered all of the above in Sitecore via the following patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="forms:export" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Forms.Core.Commands.Export.Export, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
    </commands>
    <pipelines>
      <exportToCsv>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Form.Core.Pipelines.Export.Csv.ExportToCsv, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Form.Core.Pipelines.Export.SaveContent, Sitecore.Forms.Core" />
      </exportToCsv>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Now we must wire the command to Sheer UI buttons. This is how I wired up the export ‘All’ button (this button is available in a dropdown of the main export button in the Form Reports):

I then created another export button which is used when exporting selected rows in the Form Reports:

Let’s see this in action!

I opened up the Form Reports for a test form I had built for a previous blog post, and selected some rows (notice the ‘To CSV’ button in the ribbon):

I clicked the ‘To CSV’ button — doing this launched a progress dialog (I wasn’t fast enough to grab a screenshot of it) — and was prompted to download the following file:

As you can see, the file looks beautiful in Excel ;) :

If you have any thoughts on this, or ideas for other export data formats that could be incorporated into the Form Reports of Web Forms for Marketers, please share in a comment.

Until next time, have a Sitecoretastic day!

The other day I had read a forum thread on SDN where the poster had asked whether one could determine if content returned from the Sitecore Item Web API for an Item was the actual content for the Item in the requested language.

I was intrigued by this question because I would have assumed that no results would be returned for the Item when it does not have content in the requested language but that is not the case: I had replicated what the poster had seen.

As a workaround, I built the following class to serve as an <itemWebApiGetProperties> pipeline processor which sets a property in the response indicating whether the Item has content in the requested language (check out my previous post on adding additional properties to Sitecore Item Web API responses for more information on this topic):

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Globalization;
using Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.GetProperties;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.GetProperties
{
    public class SetHasContentInLanguageProperty : GetPropertiesProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(GetPropertiesArgs arguments)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(arguments, "arguments");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(arguments.Item, "arguments.Item");
            arguments.Properties.Add("HasContentInLanguage", IsLanguageInCollection(arguments.Item.Languages, arguments.Item.Language));
        }

        private static bool IsLanguageInCollection(IEnumerable<Language> languages, Language language)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(languages, "languages");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(language, "language");
            return languages.Any(lang => lang == language);
        }
    }
}

The code in the above class checks to see if the Item has content in the requested language — the latter is set in the Language property of the Item instance, and the Languages property contains a list of all languages it has content for.

I then added the above pipeline processor via the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <itemWebApiGetProperties>
        <processor patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.GetProperties.GetProperties, Sitecore.ItemWebApi']"
            type="Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.GetProperties.SetHasContentInLanguageProperty, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
      </itemWebApiGetProperties>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s see how this works!

I first created an Item for testing:

This Item only has content in English:

I then toggled my Sitecore Item Web API configuration to allow for anonymous access so that I can make requests in my browser, and made a request for the test Item in English:

The Item does have content in English, and this is denoted by the ‘HasContentInLanguage’ property.

I then made a request for the Item in French:

As expected, the ‘HasContentInLanguage’ is false since the Item does not have content in French.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this, please drop a comment.

This past weekend I noticed the <formUploadFile> pipeline in Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM), and wondered whether I could create an alternative solution to the one I had shared in this post — I had built a custom WFFM field type to prevent certain files from being uploaded through WFFM forms.

After some tinkering, I came up the following class to serve as a <formUploadFile> pipeline processor:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

using Sitecore.Form.Core.Pipelines.FormUploadFile;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Form.Pipelines.FormUploadFile
{
    public class CheckMimeTypesNotAllowed
    {
        static CheckMimeTypesNotAllowed()
        {
            MimeTypesNotAllowed = new List<string>();
        }

        public void Process(FormUploadFileArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            string mimeType = GetMimeType(args.File.FileName);
            if (IsMimeTypeAllowed(mimeType))
            {
                return;
            }

            throw new Exception(string.Format("Uploading a file with MIME type {0} is not allowed", mimeType));
        }

        protected virtual string GetMimeType(string fileName)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(fileName, "fileName");
            return MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(fileName);
        }

        protected virtual bool IsMimeTypeAllowed(string mimeType)
        {
            foreach (string mimeTypeNotAllowed in MimeTypesNotAllowed)
            {
                if (AreEqualIgnoreCase(mimeTypeNotAllowed, mimeType))
                {
                    return false;
                }    
            }

            return true;
        }

        private static bool AreEqualIgnoreCase(string stringOne, string stringTwo)
        {
            return string.Equals(stringOne, stringTwo, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        }

        private static void AddMimeTypeNotAllowed(string mimeType)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(mimeType) || MimeTypesNotAllowed.Contains(mimeType))
            {
                return;
            }

            MimeTypesNotAllowed.Add(mimeType);
        }

        private static IList<string> MimeTypesNotAllowed { get; set; }
    }
}

The class above adds restricted MIME types to a list — these MIME types are defined in a configuration file shown below — and checks to see if the uploaded file’s MIME type is in the restricted list. If it is restricted, an exception is thrown with some information — throwing an exception in WFFM prevents the form from being submitted.

MIME types are inferred using System.Web.MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(string fileName), a method that is new in .NET 4.5 (this solution will not work in older versions of .NET).

I then registered the class above as a <formUploadFile> pipeline processor via the following configuration file:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:x="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <formUploadFile>
        <processor patch:before="processor[@type='Sitecore.Form.Core.Pipelines.FormUploadFile.Save, Sitecore.Forms.Core']"
                   type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Form.Pipelines.FormUploadFile.CheckMimeTypesNotAllowed">
          <mimeTypesNotAllowed hint="list:AddMimeTypeNotAllowed">
            <mimeType>application/octet-stream</mimeType>
          </mimeTypesNotAllowed >
        </processor>  
      </formUploadFile>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

In case you are wondering, the MIME type being passed to the processor in the configuration file is for executables.

Let’s see how we did. ;)

I whipped up a test form, and pulled it up in a browser:

I then selected an executable:

I saw this after an attempt to submit the form:

And my log file expressed why:

I then copied a jpeg into my test folder, and selected it to be uploaded:

After clicking the submit button, I was given a nice confirmation message:

There is one problem with the solution above that I would like to point out: it does not address the issue of file extensions being changed. I could not solve this problem since the MIME type of the file being uploaded cannot be determined from the Sitecore.Form.Core.Media.PostedFile instance set in the arguments object: there is no property for it. :(

If you know of another way to determine MIME types on Sitecore.Form.Core.Media.PostedFile instances, or have other ideas for restricting certain files from being uploaded through WFFM, please share in a comment.

For the past couple of years, I have been trying to come up with an idea for adding a custom <getMediaCreatorOptions> pipeline processor — this is no lie or exaggeration — but had not thought of any good reason to do so until today: I figured out that I could add a processor to set default alternate text on an image being uploaded into the Sitecore Media Library.

The following class contains code to serve as a <getMediaCreatorOptions> pipeline processor to set default alternate text on an image Item during upload:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.GetMediaCreatorOptions;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetMediaCreatorOptions
{
    public class SetDefaultAlternateTextIfNeed
    {
        public void Process(GetMediaCreatorOptionsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(args.Options.AlternateText))
            {
                return;
            }

            args.Options.AlternateText = GetAlternateText(args);
        }

        protected virtual string GetAlternateText(GetMediaCreatorOptionsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(args.Options.Destination) || args.Options.Destination.IndexOf("/") < 0)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            int startofNameIndex = args.Options.Destination.LastIndexOf("/") + 1;
            return args.Options.Destination.Substring(startofNameIndex);
        }
    }
}

The code above will set the AlternateText property of the Options property of the GetMediaCreatorOptionsArgs instance when its not set: I set it to be the name of the Media Library Item by default — I extract this from the path destination of the Item.

I then registered the above class as a <getMediaCreatorOptions> pipeline processor in the following Sitecore configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <getMediaCreatorOptions>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetMediaCreatorOptions.SetDefaultAlternateTextIfNeed, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
      </getMediaCreatorOptions>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s try this out.

I went to my Media Library, and selected an image to upload:

During the upload, I did not specify its alternate text.

As you can see, it was given an alternate text value by default:

If you have any thoughts on this, please drop a comment.

But whatever you do, just don’t let this happen to you:

Earlier today while preparing a training session on how to add JavaScript from a Multi-Line Text field to a rendered Sitecore page, I encountered something I had seen in the past but forgot about: Sitecore FieldControls and the FieldRenderer Web Control will convert newlines into HTML breaks.

For example, suppose you have the following JavaScript in a Multi-Line Text field:

You could use a Text FieldControl to render it:

<%@ Control Language="c#" AutoEventWireup="true" TargetSchema="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5" %>
<sc:Text ID="scJavaScript" Field="JavaScript" runat="server" />

Unfortunately, your JavaScript will not work since it will contain HTML breaks:

Why does this happen? In the RenderField() method in Sitecore.Web.UI.WebControls.FieldRenderer — this lives in Sitecore.Kernel.dll, and is called by all FieldControls — passes a “linebreaks” parameter to the <renderField> pipeline:

The Process() method in Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetMemoFieldValue — this serves as one of the “out of the box” processors of the <renderField> pipeline — converts all carriage returns, line feeds, and newlines into HTML breaks:

What can we do to prevent this from happening? Well, you could spin up a new class with a Process() method to serve as a new <renderField> pipeline processor, and use that instead of Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetMemoFieldValue:

using System;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RenderField
{
    public class GetRawMemoFieldValueWhenApplicable
    {
        public void Process(RenderFieldArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            if(!AreEqualIgnoreCase(args.FieldTypeKey, "memo") && !AreEqualIgnoreCase(args.FieldTypeKey, "multi-line text"))
            {
                return;
            }

            bool omitHtmlBreaks;
            if (bool.TryParse(args.Parameters["omitHtmlBreaks"], out omitHtmlBreaks))
            {
                return;
            }

            Assert.IsNotNull(DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor, "DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor must be set in your configuration!");
            DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor.Process(args);
        }

        private static bool AreEqualIgnoreCase(string stringOne, string stringTwo)
        {
            return string.Equals(stringOne, stringTwo, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        }

        private GetMemoFieldValue DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor { get; set; }
    }
}

The Process() method in the class above looks for an “omitHtmlBreaks” parameter, and just exits out of the Process() method when it is set to true — it leaves the field value “as is”.

If the “omitHtmlBreaks”parameter is not found in the RenderFieldArgs instance, or it is set to false, the Process() method delegates to the Process() method of its DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor property — this would be an instance of the “out of the box” Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetMemoFieldValue, and this is passed to the new <renderField> pipeline processor via the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <renderField>
        <processor patch:instead="processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetMemoFieldValue, Sitecore.Kernel']"
                   type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.RenderField.GetRawMemoFieldValueWhenApplicable, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <DefaultGetMemoFieldValueProcessor type="Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField.GetMemoFieldValue, Sitecore.Kernel" />
        </processor>  
      </renderField>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s test this.

I added the “omitHtmlBreaks” parameter to the control I had shown above:

<%@ Control Language="c#" AutoEventWireup="true" TargetSchema="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5" %>
<sc:Text ID="scJavaScript" Field="JavaScript" Parameters="omitHtmlBreaks=true" runat="server" />

When I loaded my page, I was given a warm welcome:

When I viewed my page’s source, I no longer see HTML breaks:

If you have any thoughts on this, or know of another way to do this, please share in a comment.

I thought I would jot down some information that frequently comes up when I am asked to recommend plans of attack on projects. The first recommendation I always give for any Sitecore project is: define as much as you possibly can in Sitecore configuration. Doing so introduces seams in your code: code that does not have to change when its underlying behavior changes — think interfaces. ;)

When defining types in Sitecore configuration, you are leveraging Sitecore’s built-in Dependency Injection framework: Sitecore’s Configuration Factory will magically inject instances of classes — yes, you would define these in configuration files — into properties of classes that are used for your pipeline processors, event handlers, and other Sitecore configuration-defined objects.

For example, suppose we have the following interface for classes that change state on an instance of a phony subclass of Sitecore.Pipelines.PipelineArgs:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public interface ISomeThing
    {
        void DoStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args);
    }
}

Let’s create a fake class that implements the ISomeThing interface above:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public class SomeThing : ISomeThing
    {
        public void DoStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            // it would be nice if we had code in here
        }
    }
}

We can then define a class property with the ISomeThing interface type in a class that serves as a pipeline processor:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public class SomeProcessor
    {
        public void Process(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            DoSomethingWithArgs(args);
        }

        private void DoSomethingWithArgs(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(SomeThing, "SomeThing must be set in your configuration!");
            SomeThing.DoStuff(args);
        }

        private ISomeThing SomeThing { get; set; } // this is populated magically!
    }
}

The class above would serve as a processor for the dummy <somePipeline> defined in the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <somePipeline>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline.SomeProcessor, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <SomeThing type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline.SomeThing, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        </processor>  
      </somePipeline>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

In the configuration file above, we defined a <SomeThing /> element within the processor element of the <somePipeline> pipeline, and this directly maps to the SomeThing property in the SomeProcessor class shown above. Keep in mind that names matter here, so the name of the configuration element must match the name of the property.

Until next time, have a Sitecoretastic day!

In my previous post, I showed how you can leverage Sitecore’s Configuration Factory to inject dependencies into properties of class instances — this is known as Setter injection in the Dependency injection world — and thought I would share another way you can inject dependencies into instances of classes defined in configuration: through class constructors (this is known as Constructor injection).

Suppose we have the following interface for objects that perform some kind of operation on parameters passed to their DoSomeOtherStuff() method:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public interface ISomeOtherThing
    {
        void DoSomeOtherStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args, string someString);
    }
}

The following dummy class implements the interface above — sadly, it does not do anything:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public class SomeOtherThing : ISomeOtherThing
    {
        public void DoSomeOtherStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args, string someString)
        {
            // TODO: add code to do some other stuff
        }
    }
}

In my previous post, I defined the following interface for objects that “do stuff”, and will reuse it here:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public interface ISomeThing
    {
        void DoStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args);
    }
}

I have modified the SomeThing class from my previous post to consume an instance of a class that implements the ISomeOtherThing interface above along with a string instance:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public class SomeThing : ISomeThing
    {
        public SomeThing(ISomeOtherThing someOtherThing, string someString)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(someOtherThing, "someOtherThing");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(someString, "someString");
            SomeOtherThing = someOtherThing;
            SomeString = someString;
        }

        public void DoStuff(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            SomeOtherThing.DoSomeOtherStuff(args, SomeString);
        }

        private ISomeOtherThing SomeOtherThing { get; set; }

        private string SomeString { get; set; }
    }
}

The Sitecore Configuration Factory will magically create instances of the types passed to the constructor of the SomeThing class defined above, and you can then assign these instances to members defined in your class.

As far as I know — I did a lot of digging in Sitecore.Kernel.dll for answers, and some code experimentation — the Sitecore Configuration Factory will only magically inject instances of class types and strings: it will not inject .NET primitive types (if I am incorrect on this, please share in a comment).

I have reused the SomeProcessor class from my previous post — I did not change any code in it:

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline
{
    public class SomeProcessor
    {
        public void Process(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            DoSomethingWithArgs(args);
        }

        private void DoSomethingWithArgs(SomeProcessorArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(SomeThing, "SomeThing");
            SomeThing.DoStuff(args);
        }

        private ISomeThing SomeThing { get; set; } // is populated magically via Setter injection!
    }
}

We can then piece everything together using a Sitecore patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <somePipeline>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline.SomeProcessor, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <SomeThing type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline.SomeThing, Sitecore.Sandbox">
            <param hint="1" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SomePipeline.SomeOtherThing, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
            <param hint="2">just some string</param>
          </SomeThing>  
        </processor>  
      </somePipeline>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

You must define <param> elements in order to pass arguments to constructors. The “hint” attribute determines the order of the parameters passed to the class constructor, though I believe using this attribute is optional (if I am wrong on this assumption, please share in a comment below).

If you have any thoughts on this, please drop a comment.

Yesterday, I had the privilege to present with Ben Lipson and Jamie Michalski, both of Velir, on the Sitecore Item Web API at the New England Sitecore User Group — if you want to see us in action, check out the recording of our presentation!

Plus, my slides are available here!

During my presentation, I demonstrated how easy it is to customize the Sitecore Item API by adding a custom <itemWebApiRequest> pipeline processor, and a custom pipeline to handle a cloning request — for another example on adding a custom <itemWebApiRequest> pipeline processor, and another pipeline to execute a different custom operation, have a look at this post where I show how to publish Items using the Sitecore Item Web API.

For any custom pipeline you build for the Sitecore Item Web API, you must define a Parameter Object that inherits from Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.OperationArgs:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;

using Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone
{
    public class CloneArgs : OperationArgs
    {
        public CloneArgs(Item[] scope)
            : base(scope)
        {
        }

        public IEnumerable<Item> Destinations { get; set; }

        public bool IsRecursive { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<Item> Clones { get; set; }
    }
}

I added three properties to the class above: a property to hold parent destinations for clones; another indicating whether all descendants should be cloned; and a property to hold a collection of the clones.

I then created a base class for processors of my custom pipeline for cloning:

using Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone
{
    public abstract class CloneProcessor : OperationProcessor<CloneArgs>
    {
        protected CloneProcessor()
        {
        }
    }
}

The above class inherits from Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.OperationProcessor which is the base class for most Sitecore Item Web API pipelines.

The following class serves as one processor of my custom cloning pipeline:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone
{
    public class CloneItems : CloneProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(CloneArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Scope, "args.Scope");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Destinations, "args.Destinations");
            IList<Item> clones = new List<Item>();
            foreach (Item itemToClone in args.Scope)
            {
                foreach (Item destination in args.Destinations)
                {
                    clones.Add(CloneItem(itemToClone, destination, args.IsRecursive));
                }   
            }

            args.Clones = clones;
        }

        private Item CloneItem(Item item, Item destination, bool isRecursive)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(destination, "destination");
            return item.CloneTo(destination, isRecursive);
        }
    }
}

The class above iterates over all Items in scope — these are the Items being cloned — and clones all to the specified destinations (parent Items of the clones).

I then spun up the following class to serve as another processor in my custom cloning pipeline:

using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;

using Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Read;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone
{
    public class SetResult : CloneProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(CloneArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Clones, "args.Clones");
            if (args.Result == null)
            {
                ReadArgs readArgs = new ReadArgs(args.Clones.ToArray());
                CorePipeline.Run("itemWebApiRead", readArgs);
                args.Result = readArgs.Result;
            }
        }
    }
}

The above class delegates to the <itemWebApiRead> pipeline which retrieves the clones from Sitecore, and stores these in the Parameter Object instance for the custom cloning pipeline.

In order to handle custom requests in the Sitecore Item Web API, you must create a custom <itemWebApiRequest> pipeline processor. I put together the following class to handle my cloning operation:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.ItemWebApi;
using Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Request;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Text;
using Sitecore.Web;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Request
{
    public class ResolveCloneAction : RequestProcessor
    {
        public override void Process(RequestArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(RequestMethod, "RequestMethod");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(MultipleItemsDelimiter, "MultipleItemsDelimiter");
            if (!ShouldProcessRequest(args))
            {
                return;
            }

            IEnumerable<Item> destinations = GetDestinationItems();
            if (!destinations.Any())
            {
                Logger.Warn("Cannot process clone action: there are no destination items!");
                return;
            }
            
            CloneArgs cloneArgs = new CloneArgs(args.Scope) 
            { 
                Destinations = destinations,
                IsRecursive = DoRecursiveCloning() 
            };
            CorePipeline.Run("itemWebApiClone", cloneArgs);
            args.Result = cloneArgs.Result;
        }

        private bool ShouldProcessRequest(RequestArgs args)
        {
            // Is this the request method we care about?
            if (!AreEqualIgnoreCase(args.Context.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod, RequestMethod))
            {
                return false;
            }

            // are multiple axes supplied?
            if (WebUtil.GetQueryString("scope").Contains(MultipleItemsDelimiter))
            {
                Logger.Warn("Cannot process clone action: multiple axes detected!");
                return false;
            }

            // are there any items in scope?
            if (!args.Scope.Any())
            {
                Logger.Warn("Cannot process clone action: there are no items in Scope!");
                return false;
            }

            return true;
        }

        private static bool AreEqualIgnoreCase(string one, string two)
        {
            return string.Equals(one, two, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        }
        
        private IEnumerable<Item> GetDestinationItems()
        {
            char delimiter;
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(char.TryParse(MultipleItemsDelimiter, out delimiter), "MultipleItemsDelimiter", "MultipleItemsDelimiter must be a single character!");
            ListString destinations = new ListString(WebUtil.GetQueryString("destinations"), delimiter);
            return (from destination in destinations
                    let destinationItem = GetItem(destination)
                    where destinationItem != null
                    select destinationItem).ToList();
        }

        private Item GetItem(string path)
        {
            try
            {
                return Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Context.Current.Database.Items[path];
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Logger.Error(ex);
            }

            return null;
        }

        private bool DoRecursiveCloning()
        {
            bool recursive;
            if (bool.TryParse(WebUtil.GetQueryString("recursive"), out recursive))
            {
                return recursive;
            }
            
            return false;
        }

        private string RequestMethod { get; set; }

        private string MultipleItemsDelimiter { get; set; }
    }
}

The above class ascertains whether it should handle the request: is the RequestMethod passed via configuration equal to the request method detected, and are there any Items in scope? I also built this processor to handle only one axe in order to keep the code simple.

Once the class determines it should handle the request, it grabs all destination Items from the context database — this is Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Context.Current.Database which is populated via the sc_database query string parameter passed via the request.

Further, the class above detects whether the cloning operation is recursive: should we clone all descendants of the Items in scope? This is also passed by a query string parameter.

I then glued everything together using the following Sitecore configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <itemWebApiClone>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone.CloneItems, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Clone.SetResult, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
      </itemWebApiClone>
      <itemWebApiRequest>
        <processor patch:before="*[@type='Sitecore.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Request.ResolveAction, Sitecore.ItemWebApi']"
                   type="Sitecore.Sandbox.ItemWebApi.Pipelines.Request.ResolveCloneAction, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <RequestMethod>clone</RequestMethod>
          <MultipleItemsDelimiter>|</MultipleItemsDelimiter>
        </processor>
      </itemWebApiRequest>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s clone the following Sitecore Item with descendants to two folders:

In order to make this happen, I spun up the following HTML page using jQuery — no doubt the front-end gurus reading this are cringing when seeing the following code, but I am not much of a front-end developer:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
		<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/json3/3.3.2/json3.min.js"></script>
		<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prettify/r224/prettify.js"></script>
		<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prettify/r224/prettify.css" />
	</head>
	<body>
		<img width="400" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" src="/assets/img/clone-all-the-things.jpg" />
		<input type="button" id="button" value="Clone" style="width:100px;height:50px;font-size: 24px;" />
		<h2 id="confirmation" style="display: none;">Whoa! Something happened!</h2>
		<div id="working" style="display: none;"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" src="/assets/img/arrow-working.gif" /></div>
		<pre id="responseContainer" class="prettyprint" style="display: none;"><code id="response" class="language-javascript"></code></pre>
		<script type="text/javascript">
		$('#button').click(function() {
			$('#confirmation').hide();
			$('#responseContainer').hide();
			$('#working').show();
			$.ajax({
					type:'clone',
					url: "http://sandbox7/-/item/v1/sitecore/content/Home/Landing Page One?scope=s&destinations=/sitecore/content/Home/Clones|/sitecore/content/Home/Some More Clones&recursive=true&sc_database=master",
					headers:{
						"X-Scitemwebapi-Username":"extranet\\ItemWebAPI",
						"X-Scitemwebapi-Password":"1t3mW3bAP1"}
				}).done(function(response) {
					$('#confirmation').show();
					$('#response').html(JSON.stringify(response, null, 4));
					$('#working').hide();
					$('#responseContainer').show();
				});
		});
		</script>
	</body>
</html>

Plus, please pardon the hard-coded Sitecore credentials — I know you would never store a username and password in front-end code, right? ;)

The above HTML page looks like this on initial load:

I then clicked the ‘Clone’ button, and saw the following:

As you can see, the target Item with descendants were cloned to the destination folders set in the jQuery above:

If you have any thoughts on this, or have other ideas around customizing the Sitecore Item Web API, please share in a comment.

The other day I was poking around Sitecore.Forms.Mvc.dll — this assembly ships with Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM), and is used when WFFM is running on Sitecore MVC — and noticed WFFM does some bundling of JavaScript and CSS files:

WFFM uses the above class as an <initialize> pipeline processor. You can see this defined in Sitecore.Forms.Mvc.config:

This got me thinking: why not build my own class to serve as an <initialize> pipeline processor to bundle my CSS and JavaScript files?

As an experiment I whipped up the following class to do just that:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Optimization;

using Sitecore.Pipelines;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Forms.Mvc.Pipelines
{         
    public class RegisterAdditionalFormBundles
    {
        public RegisterAdditionalFormBundles()
        {
            CssFiles = new List<string>();
            JavaScriptFiles = new List<string>();
        }

        public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            BundleCollection bundles = GetBundleCollection();
            if (bundles == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            AddBundle(bundles, CreateCssBundle());
            AddBundle(bundles, CreateJavaScriptBundle());
        }

        protected virtual BundleCollection GetBundleCollection()
        {
            return BundleTable.Bundles;
        }

        protected virtual Bundle CreateCssBundle()
        {
            if (!CanBundleAssets(CssVirtualPath, CssFiles))
            {
                return null;
            }

            return new StyleBundle(CssVirtualPath).Include(CssFiles.ToArray());
        }

        protected virtual Bundle CreateJavaScriptBundle()
        {
            if (!CanBundleAssets(JavaScriptVirtualPath, JavaScriptFiles))
            {
                return null;
            }

            return new ScriptBundle(JavaScriptVirtualPath).Include(JavaScriptFiles.ToArray());
        }

        protected virtual bool CanBundleAssets(string virtualPath, IEnumerable<string> filePaths)
        {
            return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(virtualPath)
                    && filePaths != null
                    && filePaths.Any();
        }

        private static void AddBundle(BundleCollection bundles, Bundle bundle)
        {
            if(bundle == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            bundles.Add(bundle);
        }

        private string CssVirtualPath { get; set; }

        private List<string> CssFiles { get; set; }

        private string JavaScriptVirtualPath { get; set; }

        private List<string> JavaScriptFiles { get; set; }
    }
}

The class above basically takes in a collection of CSS and JavaScript file paths as well as their virtual bundled paths — these are magically populated by Sitecore’s Configuration Factory using values provided by the configuration file shown below — iterates over both collections, and adds them to the BundleTable — the BundleTable is defined in System.Web.Optimization.dll.

I then glued everything together using a patch configuration file:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <initialize>
        <processor patch:after="processor[@type='Sitecore.Forms.Mvc.Pipelines.RegisterFormBundles, Sitecore.Forms.Mvc']"
          type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Forms.Mvc.Pipelines.RegisterAdditionalFormBundles, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <CssVirtualPath>~/wffm-bundles/styles.css</CssVirtualPath>
          <CssFiles hint="list">
            <CssFile>~/css/uniform.aristo.css</CssFile>
          </CssFiles>
          <JavaScriptVirtualPath>~/wffm-bundles/scripts.js</JavaScriptVirtualPath>
          <JavaScriptFiles hint="list">
            <JavaScriptFile>~/js/jquery.min.js</JavaScriptFile>
            <JavaScriptFile>~/js/jquery.uniform.min.js</JavaScriptFile>
            <JavaScriptFile>~/js/bind.uniform.js</JavaScriptFile>
          </JavaScriptFiles>
        </processor>
      </initialize>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

I’m adding the <initialize> pipeline processor shown above after WFFM’s though theoretically you could add it anywhere within the <initialize> pipeline.

The CSS and JavaScript files defined in the configuration file above are from the Uniform project — this project includes CSS, JavaScript and images to make forms look nice, though I am in no way endorsing this project. I only needed some CSS and JavaScript files to spin up something quickly for testing.

For testing, I built the following View — it uses some helpers to render the <link> and <script> tags for the bundles — and tied it to my Layout in Sitecore:

@using System.Web.Optimization
@using Sitecore.Mvc
@using Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <title></title>

    @Styles.Render("~/wffm-bundles/styles.css")
    @Scripts.Render("~/wffm-bundles/scripts.js")
    
</head>
<body>
    

    @Html.Sitecore().Placeholder("page content")

</body>
</html>

I then built a “Feedback” form in WFFM; mapped it to the “page content” placeholder defined in the View above; published it; and pulled it up in my browser. As you can see the code from the Uniform project styled the form:

For comparison, this is what the form looks like without the <initialize> pipeline processor above:

If you have any thoughts on this, or have alternative ways of bundling CSS and JavaScript files in your Sitecore MVC solutions, please share in a comment.

Earlier today a colleague had asked me how to add additional Item fields into RSS feeds generated by Sitecore.

I could have sworn there was an easy way to do this, but when looking at the RSS Feed Design dialog in Sitecore, it appears you are limited to three fields on your Items “out of the box”:

After a lot of digging in Sitecore.Kernel.dll, I discovered that one can inject a subclass of Sitecore.Syndication.PublicFeed to override/augment RSS feed functionality:

As a proof-of-concept, I whipped up the following subclass of Sitecore.Syndication.PublicFeed:

using System.ServiceModel.Syndication; // Note: you must reference System.ServiceModel.dll to use this!

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.RenderField;
using Sitecore.Syndication;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Syndication
{
    public class ImageInContentPublicFeed : PublicFeed
    {
        private static string ImageFieldName { get; set; }

        private static string RenderFieldPipelineName { get; set; }

        static ImageInContentPublicFeed()
        {
            ImageFieldName = Settings.GetSetting("RSS.Fields.ImageFieldName");
            RenderFieldPipelineName = Settings.GetSetting("Pipelines.RenderField");
        }

        protected override SyndicationItem RenderItem(Item item)
        {
            SyndicationItem syndicationItem = base.RenderItem(item);
            AddImageHtmlToContent(syndicationItem, GetImageFieldHtml(item));
            return syndicationItem;
        }

        protected virtual string GetImageFieldHtml(Item item)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ImageFieldName))
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            return GetImageFieldHtml(item, ImageFieldName);
        }

        private static string GetImageFieldHtml(Item item, string imageFieldName)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(imageFieldName, "imageFieldName");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(RenderFieldPipelineName, "RenderFieldPipelineName");
            if (item == null || item.Fields[imageFieldName] == null)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            RenderFieldArgs args = new RenderFieldArgs { Item = item, FieldName = imageFieldName };
            CorePipeline.Run(RenderFieldPipelineName, args);
            if (args.Result.IsEmpty)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            return args.Result.ToString();
        }

        protected virtual void AddImageHtmlToContent(SyndicationItem syndicationItem, string imageHtml)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(imageHtml) || !(syndicationItem.Content is TextSyndicationContent))
            {
                return;
            }

            TextSyndicationContent content = syndicationItem.Content as TextSyndicationContent;
            syndicationItem.Content = new TextSyndicationContent(string.Concat(imageHtml, content.Text), TextSyndicationContentKind.Html);
        }
    }
}

The class above ultimately overrides the RenderItem(Item item) method defined on Sitecore.Syndication.PublicFeed — it is declared virtual. The RenderItem(Item item) method above delegates to the RenderItem(Item item) method of Sitecore.Syndication.PublicFeed; grabs the System.ServiceModel.Syndication.SyndicationContent instance set in the Content property of the returned SyndicationItem object — this happens to be an instance of System.ServiceModel.Syndication.TextSyndicationContent; delegates to the <renderField> pipeline to generate HTML for the image set in the Image Field on the item; creates a new System.ServiceModel.Syndication.TextSyndicationContent instance with the HTML of the image combined with the HTML from the original TextSyndicationContent instance; sets the Content property with this new System.ServiceModel.Syndication.TextSyndicationContent instance; and returns the SyndicationItem instance to the caller.

Since I hate hard-coding things, I put the Image Field’s name and <renderField> pipeline’s name in a patch configuration file:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <settings>
      <setting name="RSS.Fields.ImageFieldName" value="Image" />
      <setting name="Pipelines.RenderField" value="renderField" />
    </settings>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

I then mapped the above subclass of Sitecore.Syndication.PublicFeed to the RSS Feed Item I created:

For testing, I added two Items — one with an image and another without an image:

After publishing everything, I loaded the RSS feed in my browser and saw the following:

If you know of other ways to add additional Item fields into Sitecore RSS feeds, please share in a comment.

Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to come up with a good idea for a blog post showing the usage of the Decorator design pattern in Sitecore.

During this time of cogitation, I was having difficulties coming up with a good example despite having had used this pattern in Sitecore on many past projects — I can’t really share those solutions since they are owned by either previous employers or clients.

However, I finally had an “EUREKA!” moment after John West — CTO of Sitecore USA — wrote a blog post earlier today where he shared an <httpRequestBegin> pipeline processor which redirects to a canonical URL for an Item.

So, what exactly did I come up with?

I built the following example which simply “decorates” the “out of the box” ItemResolver — Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver in Sitecore.Kernel.dll — which is used as an <httpRequestBegin> pipeline processor to figure out what the context Item should be from the URL being requested by looking for an entry in the IDTable in Sitecore (note: this idea is adapted from a blog post that Alex Shyba — Director of Platform Innovation and Engineering at Sitecore — wrote a few years ago):

using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.IDTables;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.HttpRequest
{
    public class IDTableItemResolver : HttpRequestProcessor
    {
        private string Prefix { get; set; }

        private HttpRequestProcessor InnerProcessor { get; set; }

        public override void Process(HttpRequestArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            AssertProperties();
            
            Item item = GetItem(args.Url.FilePath);
            if (item == null)
            {
                InnerProcessor.Process(args);       
                return;
            }

            Context.Item = item; 
        }

        protected virtual void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(Prefix, "Prefix", "Prefix must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(InnerProcessor, "InnerProcessor", "InnerProcessor must be set in configuration!");
        }

        protected virtual Item GetItem(string url)
        {
            IDTableEntry entry = IDTable.GetID(Prefix, url);
            if (entry == null || entry.ID.IsNull)
            {
                return null;
            }

            return GetItem(entry.ID);
        }

        protected Item GetItem(ID id)
        {
            Database database = GetDatabase();
            if (database == null)
            {
                return null;
            }

            return database.GetItem(id);
        }

        protected virtual Database GetDatabase()
        {
            return Context.Database;
        }
    }
}

What is the above class doing? It’s basically seeing if it can find an Item for the passed relative URL — this is passed via the FilePath property of the Url property of the HttpRequestArgs instance taken in by the Process() method — by delegating to a method that looks up an entry in the IDTable for the URL — the URL would be the key into the IDTable — and return the Item from the context database if an entry is found. If no entry is found, it just returns null.

If null is returned, that pretty much means there is no entry in the IDTable for the given relative URL so a delegation to the Process() method of the InnerProcessor is needed in order to preserve “out of the box” Sitecore functionality for Item URL resolution.

I then replaced the “out of the box” ItemResolver with the above in the following patch include configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <httpRequestBegin>
        <processor patch:instead="*[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver, Sitecore.Kernel']" 
                   type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.HttpRequest.IDTableItemResolver, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <Prefix>UrlRewrite</Prefix>
          <InnerProcessor type="Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver, Sitecore.Kernel" />
        </processor>  
      </httpRequestBegin>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

In the above configuration file, we are setting the “out of the box” ItemResolver to be injected into the class above so that its Process() method can be “decorated”.

Let’s see this in action!

Let’s try this out with the following page Item:

In order to see the above <httpRequestBegin> pipeline processor in action, I had to add an entry into my IDTable — let’s make pretend an UrlRewrite module on the Sitecore Marketplace added this entry for us:

I loaded up another browser window; navigated to the relative URL specified in the IDTable entry; and then saw the following:

As you can see, it worked.

We can also navigate to the same page using its true URL — the one resolved by Sitecore “out of the box”:

The above worked because the inner processor resolved it.

Let’s now go to a completely different page Item altogether. Let’s use this one:

As you can see, that also worked:

If you have any thoughts on this, or have other ideas around using the Decorator pattern in Sitecore, please share in a comment.

This post is a continuation of a series of posts I’m putting together around using design patterns in Sitecore solutions, and will show a “proof of concept” around using the Template method pattern — a pattern where classes have an abstract base class that defines most of an “algorithm” for how classes that inherit from it work but provides method stubs — these are abstract methods that must be implemented by subclasses to “fill in the blanks” of the “algorithm” — and method hooks — these are virtual methods that can be overridden if needed.

In this “proof of concept”, I am tapping into the <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline in order to add custom content editor warnings for Items — if you are unfamiliar with content editor warnings in Sitecore, the following screenshot illustrates an “out of the box” content editor warning around publishing and workflow state:

To start, I defined the following interface for classes that will contain content for warnings that will be displayed in the content editor:

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public interface IWarning
    {
        string Title { get; set; }

        string Message { get; set; }

        List<CommandLink> Links { get; set; }

        bool HasContent();

        IWarning Clone();
    }
}

Warnings will have a title, an error message for display, and a list of Sheer UI command links — the CommandLink class is defined further down this post — to be displayed and invoked when clicked.

You might be asking why I am defining this when I can just use what’s available in the Sitecore API? Well, I want to inject these values via the Sitecore Configuration Factory, and hopefully this will become clear once you have a look at the Sitecore configuration file further down in this post.

Next, I defined the following class that implements the interface above:

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public class Warning : IWarning
    {
        public string Title { get; set; }

        public string Message { get; set; }

        public List<CommandLink> Links { get; set; }

        public Warning()
        {
            Links = new List<CommandLink>();
        }

        public bool HasContent()
        {
            return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Title)
                    || !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Title)
                    || !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Message);
        }

        public IWarning Clone()
        {
            IWarning clone = new Warning { Title = Title, Message = Message };
            foreach (CommandLink link in Links)
            {
                clone.Links.Add(new CommandLink { Text = link.Text, Command = link.Command });
            }

            return clone;
        }
    }
}

The HasContent() method just returns “true” if the instance has any content to display though this does not include CommandLinks — what’s the point in displaying these if there is no warning content to be displayed with them?

The Clone() method makes a new instance of the Warning class, and copies values into it — this is useful when defining tokens in strings that must be expanded before being displayed. If we expand them on the instance that is injected via the Sitecore Configuration Factory, the changed strings will persistent in memory until the application pool is recycled for the Sitecore instance.

The following class represents a Sheer UI command link to be displayed in the content editor warning so content editors/authors can take action on the warning:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public class CommandLink
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }

        public string Command { get; set; }
    }
}

I then built the following abstract class to serve as the base class for all classes whose instances will serve as a <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Globalization;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Template_Method_Pattern
{
    public abstract class ContentEditorWarnings
    {
        public void Process(GetContentEditorWarningsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Item, "args.Item");
            IEnumerable<IWarning> warnings = GetWarnings(args.Item);
            if(warnings == null || !warnings.Any())
            {
                return;
            }

            foreach(IWarning warning in warnings)
            {
                AddWarning(args, warning);
            }
        }

        protected abstract IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item);

        private void AddWarning(GetContentEditorWarningsArgs args, IWarning warning)
        {
            if(!warning.HasContent())
            {
                return;
            }

            GetContentEditorWarningsArgs.ContentEditorWarning editorWarning = args.Add();
            if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(warning.Title))
            {
                editorWarning.Title = TranslateText(warning.Title);
            }

            if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(warning.Message))
            {
                editorWarning.Text = TranslateText(warning.Message);
            }

            if (!warning.Links.Any())
            {
                return;
            }
            
            foreach(CommandLink link in warning.Links)
            {
                editorWarning.AddOption(TranslateText(link.Text), link.Command);
            }
        }

        protected virtual string TranslateText(string text)
        {
            if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
            {
                return text;
            }

            return Translate.Text(text);
        }
    }
}

So what’s going on in this class? Well, the Process() method gets a collection of IWarnings from the GetWarnings() method — this method must be defined by subclasses of this class; iterates over them; and delegates to the AddWarning() method to add each to the GetContentEditorWarningsArgs instance.

The TranslateText() method calls the Text() method on the Sitecore.Globalization.Translate class — this lives in Sitecore.Kernel.dll — and is used when adding values on IWarning instances to the GetContentEditorWarningsArgs instance. This method is a hook, and can be overridden by subclasses if needed. I am not overriding this method on the subclasses further down in this post.

I then defined the following subclass of the class above to serve as a <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor to warn content authors/editors if an Item has too many child Items:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Template_Method_Pattern
{
    public class TooManyChildItemsWarnings : ContentEditorWarnings
    {
        private int MaxNumberOfChildItems { get; set; }

        private IWarning Warning { get; set; }

        protected override IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item)
        {
            AssertProperties();
            if(item.Children.Count <= MaxNumberOfChildItems)
            {
                return new List<IWarning>();
            }

            return new[] { Warning };
        }

        private void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(MaxNumberOfChildItems > 0, "MaxNumberOfChildItems", "MaxNumberOfChildItems must be set correctly in configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Warning, "Warning", "Warning must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(Warning.HasContent(), "Warning", "Warning should have some fields populated from configuration!");
        }
    }
}

The class above is getting its IWarning instance and maximum number of child Items value from Sitecore configuration.

The GetWarnings() method ascertains whether the Item has too many child Items and returns the IWarning instance when it does in a collection — I defined this to be a collection to allow <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processors subclassing the abstract base class above to return more than one warning if needed.

I then defined another subclass of the abstract class above to serve as another <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Template_Method_Pattern
{
    public class HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarnings : ContentEditorWarnings
    {
        private string CharacterSeparator { get; set; }

        private string Conjunction { get; set; }

        private List<string> InvalidCharacters { get; set; }

        private IWarning Warning { get; set; }

        public HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarnings()
        {
            InvalidCharacters = new List<string>();
        }

        protected override IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item)
        {
            AssertProperties();
            HashSet<string> charactersFound = new HashSet<string>();
            foreach (string character in InvalidCharacters)
            {
                if(item.Name.Contains(character))
                {
                    charactersFound.Add(character.ToString());
                }
            }

            if(!charactersFound.Any())
            {
                return new List<IWarning>();
            }

            IWarning warning = Warning.Clone();
            string charactersFoundString = string.Join(CharacterSeparator, charactersFound);
            int lastSeparator = charactersFoundString.LastIndexOf(CharacterSeparator);
            if (lastSeparator < 0)
            {
                warning.Message = ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(warning.Message, charactersFoundString);
                return new[] { warning };
            }

            warning.Message = ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(warning.Message, Splice(charactersFoundString, lastSeparator, CharacterSeparator.Length, Conjunction));
            return new[] { warning };
        }

        private void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(CharacterSeparator, "CharacterSeparator", "CharacterSeparator must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(InvalidCharacters != null && InvalidCharacters.Any(), "InvalidCharacters", "InvalidCharacters must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Warning, "Warning", "Warning must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(Warning.HasContent(), "Warning", "Warning should have some fields populated from configuration!");
        }

        private static string Splice(string value, int startIndex, int length, string replacement)
        {
            if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))
            {
                return value;
            }

            return string.Concat(value.Substring(0, startIndex), replacement, value.Substring(startIndex + length));
        }

        private static string ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(string value, string replacement)
        {
            return value.Replace("$invalidCharacters", replacement);
        }
    }
}

The above class will return an IWarning instance when an Item has invalid characters in its name — these invalid characters are defined in Sitecore configuration.

The GetWarnings() method iterates over all invalid characters passed from Sitecore configuration and determines if they exist in the Item name. If they do, they are added to a HashSet<string> instance — I’m using a HashSet<string> to ensure the same character isn’t added more than once to the collection — which is be used for constructing the warning message to be displayed to the content author/editor.

Once the GetWarnings() method has iterated through all invalid characters, a string is built using the HashSet<string> instance, and is put in place wherever the $invalidCharacters token is defined in the Message property of the IWarning instance.

I then registered everything above in Sitecore via the following patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <getContentEditorWarnings>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Template_Method_Pattern.TooManyChildItemsWarnings, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <MaxNumberOfChildItems>20</MaxNumberOfChildItems>
          <Warning type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Warning, Sitecore.Sandbox">
            <Title>This Item has too many child items!</Title>
            <Message>Please consider converting this Item into an Item Bucket.</Message>
            <Links hint="list">
              <Link type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.CommandLink">
                <Text>Convert to Item Bucket</Text>
                <Command>item:bucket</Command>
              </Link>
            </Links>
          </Warning>
        </processor>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Template_Method_Pattern.HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarnings, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <CharacterSeparator>,&amp;nbsp;</CharacterSeparator>
          <Conjunction>&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;</Conjunction>
          <InvalidCharacters hint="list">
            <Character>-</Character>
            <Character>$</Character>
            <Character>1</Character>
          </InvalidCharacters>
          <Warning type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Warning, Sitecore.Sandbox">
            <Title>The name of this Item has invalid characters!</Title>
            <Message>The name of this Item contains $invalidCharacters. Please consider renaming the Item.</Message>
            <Links hint="list">
              <Link type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.CommandLink">
                <Text>Rename Item</Text>
                <Command>item:rename</Command>
              </Link>
            </Links>
          </Warning>
        </processor>
      </getContentEditorWarnings>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

As you can see, I am injecting warning data into my <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processors as well as other things which are used in code for each.

For the TooManyChildItemsWarnings <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor, we are giving content authors/editors the ability to convert the Item into an Item bucket — we are injecting the item:bucket command via the configuration file above.

For the HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarnings <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor, we are passing in the Sheer UI command that will launch the Item Rename dialog to give content authors/editors the ability to rename the Item if it has invalid characters in its name.

Let’s see if this works.

I navigated to an Item in my content tree that has less than 20 child Items and has no invalid characters in its name:

As you can see, there are no warnings.

Let’s go to another Item, one that not only has more than 20 child Items but also has invalid characters in its name:

As you can see, both warnings are appearing for this Item.

Let’s now rename the Item:

Great! Now the ‘invalid characters in name” warning is gone. Let’s convert this Item into an Item Bucket:

After clicking the ‘Convert to Item Bucket’ link, I saw the following dialog:

After clicking the ‘OK’ button, I saw the following progress dialog:

As you can see, the Item is now an Item Bucket, and both content editor warnings are gone:

If you have any thoughts on this, or have ideas on other places where you might want to employ the Template method pattern, please share in a comment.

Also, if you would like to see another example around adding a custom content editor warning in Sitecore, check out an older post of mine where I added one for expanding tokens in fields on an Item.

Until next time, keep on learning and keep on Sitecoring — Sitecoring is a legit verb, isn’t it? ;)

This post is a continuation of a series of posts I’m putting together around using design patterns in Sitecore implementations, and will show a “proof of concept” around using the Strategy pattern — a pattern where a family of “algorithms” (for simplicity you can think of these as classes that implement the same interface) which should be interchangeable when used by client code, and such holds true even when each do something completely different than others within the same family.

The Strategy pattern can serve as an alternative to the Template method pattern — a pattern where classes have an abstract base class that defines most of an “algorithm” for how classes that inherit from it work but provides method stubs (abstract methods) and method hooks (virtual methods) for subclasses to implement or override — and will prove this in this post by providing an alternative solution to the one I had shown in my previous post on the Template method pattern.

In this “proof of concept”, I will be adding a processor to the <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline in order to add custom content editor warnings for Items — if you are unfamiliar with content editor warnings in Sitecore, the following screenshot illustrates an “out of the box” content editor warning around publishing and workflow state:

To start, I am reusing the following interface and classes from my previous post on the Template method pattern:

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public interface IWarning
    {
        string Title { get; set; }

        string Message { get; set; }

        List<CommandLink> Links { get; set; }

        bool HasContent();

        IWarning Clone();
    }
}

Warnings will have a title, an error message for display, and a list of Sheer UI command links — the CommandLink class is defined further down in this post — to be displayed and invoked when clicked.

You might be asking why I am defining this when I can just use what’s available in the Sitecore API? Well, I want to inject these values via the Sitecore Configuration Factory, and hopefully this will become clear once you have a look at the Sitecore configuration file further down in this post.

Next, we have a class that implements the interface above:

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public class Warning : IWarning
    {
        public string Title { get; set; }

        public string Message { get; set; }

        public List<CommandLink> Links { get; set; }

        public Warning()
        {
            Links = new List<CommandLink>();
        }

        public bool HasContent()
        {
            return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Title)
                    || !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Title)
                    || !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Message);
        }

        public IWarning Clone()
        {
            IWarning clone = new Warning { Title = Title, Message = Message };
            foreach (CommandLink link in Links)
            {
                clone.Links.Add(new CommandLink { Text = link.Text, Command = link.Command });
            }

            return clone;
        }
    }
}

The HasContent() method just returns “true” if the instance has any content to display though this does not include CommandLinks — what’s the point in displaying these if there is no warning content to be displayed with them?

The Clone() method makes a new instance of the Warning class, and copies values into it — this is useful when defining tokens in strings that must be expanded before being displayed. If we expand them on the instance that is injected via the Sitecore Configuration Factory, the changed strings will persistent in memory until the application pool is recycled for the Sitecore instance.

The following class represents a Sheer UI command link to be displayed in the content editor warning so content editors/authors can take action on the warning:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings
{
    public class CommandLink
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }

        public string Command { get; set; }
    }
}

The Strategy pattern calls for a family of “algorithms” which can be interchangeably used. In order for us to achieve this, we need to define an interface for this family of “algorithms”:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public interface IWarningsGenerator
    {
        Item Item { get; set; }

        IEnumerable<IWarning> Generate();
    }
}

Next, I created the following class that implements the interface above to ascertain whether a supplied Item has too many child Items:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public class TooManyChildItemsWarningsGenerator : IWarningsGenerator
    {
        private int MaxNumberOfChildItems { get; set; }

        private IWarning Warning { get; set; }

        public Item Item { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<IWarning> Generate()
        {
            AssertProperties();
            if (Item.Children.Count <= MaxNumberOfChildItems)
            {
                return new List<IWarning>();
            }

            return new[] { Warning };
        }

        private void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(MaxNumberOfChildItems > 0, "MaxNumberOfChildItems", "MaxNumberOfChildItems must be set correctly in configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Warning, "Warning", "Warning must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(Warning.HasContent(), "Warning", "Warning should have some fields populated from configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Item, "Item", "Item must be set!");
        }
    }
}

The “maximum number of child items allowed” value — this is stored in the MaxNumberOfChildItems integer property of the class — is passed to the class instance via the Sitecore Configuration Factory (you’ll see this defined in the Sitecore configuration file further down in this post).

The IWarning instance that is injected into the instance of this class will give content authors/editors the ability to convert the Item into an Item Bucket when it has too many child Items.

I then defined another class that implements the interface above — a class whose instances determine whether Items have invalid characters in their names:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public class HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarningsGenerator : IWarningsGenerator
    {
        private string CharacterSeparator { get; set; }

        private string Conjunction { get; set; }

        private List<string> InvalidCharacters { get; set; }

        private IWarning Warning { get; set; }

        public Item Item { get; set; }

        public HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarningsGenerator()
        {
            InvalidCharacters = new List<string>();
        }

        public IEnumerable<IWarning> Generate()
        {
            AssertProperties();
            HashSet<string> charactersFound = new HashSet<string>();
            foreach (string character in InvalidCharacters)
            {
                if (Item.Name.Contains(character))
                {
                    charactersFound.Add(character.ToString());
                }
            }

            if(!charactersFound.Any())
            {
                return new List<IWarning>();
            }

            IWarning warning = Warning.Clone();
            string charactersFoundString = string.Join(CharacterSeparator, charactersFound);
            int lastSeparator = charactersFoundString.LastIndexOf(CharacterSeparator);
            if (lastSeparator < 0)
            {
                warning.Message = ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(warning.Message, charactersFoundString);
                return new[] { warning };
            }

            warning.Message = ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(warning.Message, Splice(charactersFoundString, lastSeparator, CharacterSeparator.Length, Conjunction));
            return new[] { warning };
        }

        private void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(CharacterSeparator, "CharacterSeparator", "CharacterSeparator must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(InvalidCharacters != null && InvalidCharacters.Any(), "InvalidCharacters", "InvalidCharacters must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Warning, "Warning", "Warning must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(Warning.HasContent(), "Warning", "Warning should have some fields populated from configuration!");
            Assert.IsNotNull(Item, "Item", "Item must be set!");
        }

        private static string Splice(string value, int startIndex, int length, string replacement)
        {
            if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))
            {
                return value;
            }

            return string.Concat(value.Substring(0, startIndex), replacement, value.Substring(startIndex + length));
        }

        private static string ReplaceInvalidCharactersToken(string value, string replacement)
        {
            return value.Replace("$invalidCharacters", replacement);
        }
    }
}

The above class will return an IWarning instance when an Item has invalid characters in its name — these invalid characters are defined in Sitecore configuration.

The Generate() method iterates over all invalid characters passed from Sitecore configuration and determines if they exist in the Item name. If they do, they are added to a HashSet<string> instance — I’m using a HashSet<string> to ensure the same character isn’t added more than once to the collection — which is used for constructing the warning message to be displayed to the content author/editor.

Once the Generate() method has iterated through all invalid characters, a string is built using the HashSet<string> instance, and is put in place wherever the $invalidCharacters token is defined in the Message property of the IWarning instance.

Now that we have our family of “algorithms” defined, we need a class to encapsulate and invoke these. I defined the following interface for classes that perform this role:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public interface IWarningsGeneratorContext
    {
        IWarningsGenerator Generator { get; set; }

        IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item);
    }
}

I then defined the following class which implements the interface above:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public class WarningsGeneratorContext : IWarningsGeneratorContext
    {
        public IWarningsGenerator Generator { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item)
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(Generator, "Generator", "Generator must be set!");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            Generator.Item = item;
            return Generator.Generate();
        }
    }
}

Instances of the class above take in an instance of IWarningsGenerator via its Generator property — in a sense, we are “lock and loading” WarningsGeneratorContext instances to get them ready. Instances then pass a supplied Item instance to the IWarningsGenerator instance, and invoke its GetWarnings() method. This method returns a collection of IWarning instances.

In a way, the IWarningsGeneratorContext instances are really adapters for IWarningsGenerator instances — IWarningsGeneratorContext instances provide a bridge for client code to use IWarningsGenerator instances via its own little API.

Now that we have all of the stuff above — yes, I know, there is a lot of code in this post, and we’ll reflect on this at the end of the post — we need a class whose instance will serve as a <getContentEditorWarnings> pipeline processor:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Globalization;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern
{
    public class ContentEditorWarnings
    {
        private List<IWarningsGenerator> WarningsGenerators { get; set; }

        private IWarningsGeneratorContext WarningsGeneratorContext { get; set; }

        public ContentEditorWarnings()
        {
            WarningsGenerators = new List<IWarningsGenerator>();
        }

        public void Process(GetContentEditorWarningsArgs args)
        {
            AssertProperties();
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Item, "args.Item");
            
            IEnumerable<IWarning> warnings = GetWarnings(args.Item);
            if(warnings == null || !warnings.Any())
            {
                return;
            }

            foreach(IWarning warning in warnings)
            {
                AddWarning(args, warning);
            }
        }

        private IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(Item item)
        {
            List<IWarning> warnings = new List<IWarning>();
            foreach(IWarningsGenerator generator in WarningsGenerators)
            {
                IEnumerable<IWarning> generatorWarnings = GetWarnings(generator, item);
                if(generatorWarnings != null && generatorWarnings.Any())
                {
                    warnings.AddRange(generatorWarnings);
                }
            }

            return warnings;
        }

        private IEnumerable<IWarning> GetWarnings(IWarningsGenerator generator, Item item)
        {
            WarningsGeneratorContext.Generator = generator;
            return WarningsGeneratorContext.GetWarnings(item);
        }

        private void AddWarning(GetContentEditorWarningsArgs args, IWarning warning)
        {
            if(!warning.HasContent())
            {
                return;
            }

            GetContentEditorWarningsArgs.ContentEditorWarning editorWarning = args.Add();
            if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(warning.Title))
            {
                editorWarning.Title = TranslateText(warning.Title);
            }

            if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(warning.Message))
            {
                editorWarning.Text = TranslateText(warning.Message);
            }

            if (!warning.Links.Any())
            {
                return;
            }
            
            foreach(CommandLink link in warning.Links)
            {
                editorWarning.AddOption(TranslateText(link.Text), link.Command);
            }
        }

        private string TranslateText(string text)
        {
            if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
            {
                return text;
            }

            return Translate.Text(text);
        }

        private void AssertProperties()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(WarningsGeneratorContext, "WarningsGeneratorContext", "WarningsGeneratorContext must be set in configuration!");
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(WarningsGenerators != null && WarningsGenerators.Any(), "WarningsGenerators", "At least one WarningsGenerator must be set in configuration!");
        }
    }
}

The Process() method is the main entry into the pipeline processor. The method delegates to the GetWarnings() method to get a collection of IWarning instances from all IWarningGenerator instances that were injected into the class instance via the Sitecore Configuration Factory.

The GetWarnings() method iterates over all IWarningsGenerator instances, and passes each to the other GetWarnings() method overload which basically sets the IWarningGenerator on the IWarningsGeneratorContext instance, and invokes its GetWarnings() method with the supplied Item instance.

Once all IWarning instances have been collected, the Process() method iterates over the IWarning collection, and adds them to the GetContentEditorWarningsArgs instance via the AddWarning() method.

I then registered everything above in Sitecore using the following Sitecore patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <getContentEditorWarnings>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern.ContentEditorWarnings, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <WarningsGenerators hint="list">
            <WarningsGenerator type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern.TooManyChildItemsWarningsGenerator, Sitecore.Sandbox">
              <MaxNumberOfChildItems>20</MaxNumberOfChildItems>
              <Warning type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Warning, Sitecore.Sandbox">
                <Title>This Item has too many child items!</Title>
                <Message>Please consider converting this Item into an Item Bucket.</Message>
                <Links hint="list">
                  <Link type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.CommandLink">
                    <Text>Convert to Item Bucket</Text>
                    <Command>item:bucket</Command>
                  </Link>
                </Links>
              </Warning>
            </WarningsGenerator>
            <WarningsGenerator type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern.HasInvalidCharacetersInNameWarningsGenerator, Sitecore.Sandbox">
              <CharacterSeparator>,&amp;nbsp;</CharacterSeparator>
              <Conjunction>&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;</Conjunction>
              <InvalidCharacters hint="list">
                <Character>-</Character>
                <Character>$</Character>
                <Character>1</Character>
              </InvalidCharacters>
              <Warning type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Warning, Sitecore.Sandbox">
                <Title>The name of this Item has invalid characters!</Title>
                <Message>The name of this Item contains $invalidCharacters. Please consider renaming the Item.</Message>
                <Links hint="list">
                  <Link type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.CommandLink">
                    <Text>Rename Item</Text>
                    <Command>item:rename</Command>
                  </Link>
                </Links>
              </Warning>
            </WarningsGenerator>
          </WarningsGenerators>
          <WarningsGeneratorContext type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetContentEditorWarnings.Strategy_Pattern.WarningsGeneratorContext, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        </processor>
      </getContentEditorWarnings>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s test this out.

I set up an Item with more than 20 child Items, and gave it a name that includes -, $ and 1 — these are defined as invalid in the configuration file above:

As you can see, both warnings appear on the Item in the content editor.

Let’s convert the Item into an Item Bucket:

As you can see the Item is now an Item Bucket:

Let’s fix the Item’s name:

The Item’s name is now fixed, and there are no more content editor warnings:

You might be thinking “Mike, that is a lot of code — a significant amount over what you had shown in your previous post where you used the Template method pattern — so why bother with the Strategy pattern?”

Yes, there is more code here, and definitely more moving parts to the Strategy pattern over the Template method pattern.

So, what’s the benefit here?

Well, in the Template method pattern, subclasses are tightly coupled to their abstract base class. A change to the parent class could potentially break code in the subclasses, and this will require code in all subclasses to be changed. This could be quite a task if subclasses are defined in multiple projects that don’t reside in the same solution as the parent class.

The Strategy pattern forces loose coupling among all instances within the pattern thus reducing the likelihood that changes in one class will adversely affect others.

However, with that said, it does add complexity by introducing more code, so you should consider the pros and cons of using the Strategy pattern over the Template method pattern, or perhaps even decide if you should use a pattern to begin with.

Remember, the KISS principle should be followed wherever/whenever possible when designing and developing software.

If you have any thoughts on this, please drop a comment.

If you have read some of my older posts, you probably know by now how much I love writing code that expands tokens on Items in Sitecore, and decided to build another solution that expands new tokens added to Standard Values Items of Templates — out of the box, these aren’t expanded on preexisting Items that use the Template of the Standard Values Item, and end up making their way in fields on those preexisting Items (for an alternative solution, check out this older post I wrote some time ago).

In the following solution — this solution is primarily composed of a custom pipeline — tokens that are added to fields on the Standard Values Item will be expanded on all Items that use the Template of the Standard Values Item after the Standard Values Item is saved in the Sitecore client (I hook into the <saveUI> pipeline for this action on save).

We first need a class whose instance serves as the custom pipeline’s argument object:

using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs : PipelineArgs
    {
        public Item StandardValuesItem { get; set; }

        private List<Item> items;
        public List<Item> Items 
        {
            get
            {
                if(items == null)
                {
                    items = new List<Item>();
                }

                return items;
            }
            set
            {
                items = value;
            }
        }
    }
}

The caller of the custom pipeline is required to pass the Standard Values Item that contains the new tokens. One of the processors of the custom pipeline will collect all Items that use its Template — these are stored in the Items collection property.

The instance of the following class serves as the first processor of the custom pipeline:

using System;

using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Data.Managers;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class EnsureStandardValues
    {
        public void Process(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.StandardValuesItem, "args.StandardValuesItem");
            if(IsStandardValues(args.StandardValuesItem))
            {
                return;
            }

            args.AbortPipeline();
        }

        protected virtual bool IsStandardValues(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            return StandardValuesManager.IsStandardValuesHolder(item);
        }
    }
}

This processor basically just ascertains whether the Item passed as the Standard Values Item is indeed a Standard Values Item — the code just delegates to the static IsStandardValuesHolder() method on Sitecore.Data.StandardValuesManager (this lives in Sitecore.Kernel.dll).

The instance of the next class serves as the second step of the custom pipeline:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Fields;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class EnsureUnexpandedTokens
    {
        private List<string> Tokens { get; set; }

        public EnsureUnexpandedTokens()
        {
            Tokens = new List<string>();
        }

        public void Process(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.StandardValuesItem, "args.StandardValuesItem");
            if (!Tokens.Any())
            {
                args.AbortPipeline();
                return;
            }

            args.StandardValuesItem.Fields.ReadAll();
            foreach(Field field in args.StandardValuesItem.Fields)
            {
                if(HasUnexpandedTokens(field))
                {
                    return;
                }
            }
            
            args.AbortPipeline();
        }

        protected virtual bool HasUnexpandedTokens(Field field)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(field, "field");
            foreach(string token in Tokens)
            {
                if(field.Value.Contains(token))
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }

            return false;
        }
    }
}

A collection of tokens are injected into the class’ instance via the Sitecore Configuration Factory — see the patch configuration file further down in this post — and determines if tokens exist in any of its fields. If no tokens are found, then the pipeline is aborted. Otherwise, we exit the Process() method immediately.

The instance of the following class serves as the third processor of the custom pipeline:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.ContentSearch;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Data.Managers;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class CollectAllItems
    {
        public void Process(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.StandardValuesItem, "args.StandardValuesItem");
            args.Items = GetAllItemsByTemplateID(args.StandardValuesItem.TemplateID);
            if(args.Items.Any())
            {
                return;
            }

            args.AbortPipeline();
        }

        protected virtual List<Item> GetAllItemsByTemplateID(ID templateID)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentCondition(!ID.IsNullOrEmpty(templateID), "templateID", "templateID cannot be null or empty!");
            using (var context = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("sitecore_master_index").CreateSearchContext())
            {
                var query = context.GetQueryable<SearchResultItem>().Where(i => i.TemplateId == templateID);
                return query.ToList().Select(result => result.GetItem()).ToList();
            }  
        }
    }
}

This class uses the Sitecore.ContentSearch API to find all Items that use the Template of the Standard Values Item. If at least one Item is found, we exit the Process() method immediately. Otherwise, we abort the pipeline.

The instance of the class below serves as the fourth processor of the custom pipeline:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.ContentSearch;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch.SearchTypes;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Data.Managers;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class FilterStandardValuesItem
    {
        public void Process(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Items, "args.Items");
            if(!args.Items.Any())
            {
                return;
            }

            args.Items = args.Items.Where(item => !IsStandardValues(item)).ToList();
        }

        protected virtual bool IsStandardValues(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            return StandardValuesManager.IsStandardValuesHolder(item);
        }
    }
}

The code in this class ensures the Stardard Values Item is not in the collection of Items. It’s probably not a good idea to expand tokens on the Standard Values Item. :)

The instance of the next class serves as the final processor of the custom pipeline:

using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Data;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems
{
    public class ExpandTokens
    {
        private MasterVariablesReplacer TokenReplacer { get; set; }

        public ExpandTokens()
        {
            TokenReplacer = GetTokenReplacer();
        }

        public void Process(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args.Items, "args.Items");
            if (!args.Items.Any())
            {
                args.AbortPipeline();
                return;
            }

            foreach(Item item in args.Items)
            {
                ExpandTokensOnItem(item);
            }
        }

        protected virtual void ExpandTokensOnItem(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            item.Fields.ReadAll();
            item.Editing.BeginEdit();
            TokenReplacer.ReplaceItem(item);
            item.Editing.EndEdit();
        }

        protected virtual MasterVariablesReplacer GetTokenReplacer()
        {
            return Factory.GetMasterVariablesReplacer();
        }
    }
}

The code above uses the instance of Sitecore.Data.MasterVariablesReplacer (subclass or otherwise) — this is defined in your Sitecore configuration at settings/setting[@name=”MasterVariablesReplacer”] — and passes all Items housed in the pipeline argument instance to its ReplaceItem() method — each Item is placed in an editing state before having their tokens expanded.

I then built the following class to serve as a <saveUI> pipeline processor (this pipeline is triggered when someone saves an Item in the Sitecore client):

using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.Save;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SaveUI
{
    public class ExpandNewStandardValuesTokens
    {
        private string ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline { get; set; }

        public void Process(SaveArgs args)
        {
            Assert.IsNotNullOrEmpty(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline, "ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline must be set in configuration!");
            foreach (SaveArgs.SaveItem saveItem in args.Items)
            {
                Item item = GetItem(saveItem);
                if(IsStandardValues(item))
                {
                    ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems(item);
                }
            }
        }

        protected virtual Item GetItem(SaveArgs.SaveItem saveItem)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(saveItem, "saveItem");
            return Client.ContentDatabase.Items[saveItem.ID, saveItem.Language, saveItem.Version];
        }

        protected virtual bool IsStandardValues(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            return StandardValuesManager.IsStandardValuesHolder(item);
        }

        protected virtual void ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems(Item standardValues)
        {
            CorePipeline.Run(ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline, new ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs { StandardValuesItem = standardValues });
        }
    }
}

The code above invokes the custom pipeline when the Item being saved is a Standard Values Item — the Standard Values Item is passed to the pipeline via a new ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsArgs instance.

I then glued all of the pieces above together in the following patch configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <expandNewTokensOnAllItems>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems.EnsureStandardValues, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems.EnsureUnexpandedTokens, Sitecore.Sandbox">
          <Tokens hint="list">
            <Token>$name</Token>
            <Token>$id</Token>
            <Token>$parentid</Token>
            <Token>$parentname</Token>
            <Token>$date</Token>
            <Token>$time</Token>
            <Token>$now</Token>
          </Tokens>
        </processor>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems.CollectAllItems, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems.FilterStandardValuesItem, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.ExpandNewTokensOnAllItems.ExpandTokens, Sitecore.Sandbox" />
      </expandNewTokensOnAllItems>
    </pipelines>
    <processors>
      <saveUI>
        <processor patch:before="saveUI/processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.Save.Save, Sitecore.Kernel']" 
                   mode="on" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.SaveUI.ExpandNewStandardValuesTokens">
          <ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline>expandNewTokensOnAllItems</ExpandNewTokensOnAllItemsPipeline>
        </processor>  
      </saveUI>
    </processors>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s see this in action!

I added three new fields to a template, and added some tokens in them:

After clicking save, I navigated to one of the content Items that use this Template:

As you can see, the tokens were expanded. :)

If you have any thoughts on this, please drop a comment.