AI OnAI Offsmart_toy
Anders Hattestad
Anders Hattestad
Jun 14, 2012
visibility 6754
star star star star star
(3 votes)

Find pages a lot faster without using FindPagesWithCriteria

I have in some projects had the need to get different pages from all over my site with some criteria’s. This could have been a job for FindPagesWithCriteria, but I was a bit concerned about the performance. I therefore made myself a Dynamic DataStore table that have those page data properties I want to query against with queries like this

  1. var q = from item in Items where
  2.             item.BoolProperties.Contains("PageVisibleInMenu")
  3.         orderby item.StartPublish
  4.         select item;

Every time a page is published, moved or deleted I update the store. If the page is the master language I also update the other languages. This was actually the tricky part. With replacement languages on like this

image

The page.PageLanguages only returns the languages the page have values on. Therefore one have to get all those language pages like this:

  1. PageDataCollection languageBranches = DataFactory.Instance.GetLanguageBranches(page.PageLink);
  2. foreach (LanguageBranch current2 in LanguageBranch.ListEnabled())
  3. {
  4.     if (current2.LanguageID.ToUpper() != page.MasterLanguageBranch.ToUpper())
  5.     {
  6.         PageLanguageSetting pageLanguageSetting2 = PageLanguageSettingsTree.Instance.Get(page.PageLink, current2.LanguageID);
  7.         bool flag = languageBranches.Exists(page.PageLink, current2.LanguageID);
  8.         if (flag || (pageLanguageSetting2 != null && pageLanguageSetting2.IsActive))
  9.         {
  10.  
  11.             var page3 = EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance.GetPage(page.PageLink, LanguageSelector.Fallback(current2.LanguageID, true));
  12.             if (page3 != null)
  13.             {
  14.                 if (page3.IsDeleted)
  15.                     DeletePage(page3.PageLink, current2.LanguageID);
  16.                 else
  17.                     UpdatePage(page3, current2.LanguageID);
  18.             }
  19.  
  20.         }
  21.     }
  22. }

The actually DDS table have some known properties, and one can add other here as needed. I’m using a concept with bool properties, and for every property that is true I added to the text string BoolProperties. This includes the dynamic properties as well.

  1. [EPiServerDataStore(AutomaticallyRemapStore = true, AutomaticallyCreateStore = true)]
  2. public class EPiServerPageInfo : DDS_BaseData<EPiServerPageInfo>
  3. {
  4.     public string PageName { get; set; }
  5.  
  6.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  7.     public string PageReferenceString { get; set; }
  8.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  9.     public string LanguageID { get; set; }
  10.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  11.     public bool IsMasterLanguageBranch { get; set; }
  12.     public string MyCurrentPath { get; set; }
  13.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  14.     public DateTime StartPublish { get; set; }
  15.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  16.     public DateTime StopPublish { get; set; }
  17.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  18.     public DateTime Changed { get; set; }
  19.     [EPiServerDataIndex]
  20.     public int PageTypeID { get; set; }
  21.     public string BoolProperties { get; set; }

With have values like this:

image

When I publish/delete or move a page I hookup on the events like this

  1. public class AttachEvents : PlugInAttribute
  2. {
  3.     public static void Start()
  4.     {
  5.         EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance.PublishedPage += new EPiServer.PageEventHandler(Instance_PublishedPage);
  6.         EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance.MovedPage += new EPiServer.PageEventHandler(Instance_MovedPage);
  7.         EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance.DeletedPage += new EPiServer.PageEventHandler(Instance_DeletedPage);
  8.     }
  9.  
  10.     static void Instance_DeletedPage(object sender, EPiServer.PageEventArgs e)
  11.     {
  12.         EPiServerPageInfo.EnsurePage(e.Page);
  13.     }
  14.     static void Instance_PublishedPage(object sender, EPiServer.PageEventArgs e)
  15.     {
  16.         EPiServerPageInfo.EnsurePage(e.Page);
  17.     }
  18.     static void Instance_MovedPage(object sender, EPiServer.PageEventArgs e)
  19.     {
  20.         EPiServerPageInfo.EnsurePage(e.Page);
  21.         if (e.TargetLink.CompareToIgnoreWorkID(PageReference.WasteBasket) || e.PageLink.CompareToIgnoreWorkID(PageReference.WasteBasket))
  22.         {
  23.             DoChildren(e.PageLink);
  24.         }
  25.     }
  26.     static void DoChildren(PageReference start)
  27.     {
  28.         foreach (var child in EPiServer.DataFactory.Instance.GetChildren(start,LanguageSelector.MasterLanguage()))
  29.         {
  30.             EPiServerPageInfo.EnsurePage(child);
  31.             DoChildren(child.PageLink);
  32.         }
  33.     }
  34. }

and update this store with the new values

  1. public static void UpdatePage(PageData page, EPiServerPageInfo row)
  2. {
  3.     row.PageName = page.PageName;
  4.     row.IsMasterLanguageBranch = page.IsMasterLanguageBranch;
  5.     row.StartPublish = page.StartPublish;
  6.     row.StopPublish = page.StopPublish;
  7.     if (page.Changed > row.Changed)
  8.         row.Changed = page.Changed;
  9.     row.PageTypeID = page.PageTypeID;
  10.     var boolItems=FindBoolProperties(page);
  11.     var b = "";
  12.     foreach (var key in boolItems.Keys)
  13.         b += " " + key + " ";
  14.     row.BoolProperties = b;
  15.     row.MyCurrentPath = DigFather(page);
  16. }

If one has special elements one would like to query against its only to add that property to the DDS class and to update the UpdatePage method.

The code is here

Jun 14, 2012

Comments

Anders Hattestad
Anders Hattestad Jun 15, 2012 09:01 AM

If one would like to update the DDS table when a dynamic property is called there is a partial solution here
http://world.episerver.com/Blogs/Anders-Hattestad/Dates/2011/2/Know-your-enemy-Sun-Tzus-The-Art-of-War/

Jun 18, 2012 02:08 PM

How much faster is this approach compared to FindPagesWithCriteria?

Anders Hattestad
Anders Hattestad Jun 18, 2012 02:53 PM

Dont have any numbers, but if you only want the 5 latest pages this method will provide that possibility. FindPagesWithCriteria will have to return all the pages...

error Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Surviving a Dirty Feed. Part 3: Error Handling and Event Batching

Committing a 250,000-row Optimizely catalog import row by row, returning a per-row failure report, and coalescing catalog events into one per batch.

Stanisław Szołkowski | Oct 16, 2026 |

Building UI Extensions for Optimizely SaaS CMS

Introduction Developers have been extending the functionality of Optimizely PaaS CMS for years using addons built in C# and deployed as NuGet...

Mark Stott | Oct 15, 2026

Cheapskate AI Translator: Because Translation Should Not Require a Second Mortgage

There is a particular kind of software project that begins with a detailed architecture document, a product roadmap, and a carefully assembled...

Linh Doan Cuu | Oct 15, 2026

Computed Fields in CMS 13 Content Contracts with Optimizely Graph

Content Contracts in Optimizely CMS 13 allow different content types to share a common structure when querying Optimizely Graph. But what if the...

Mardy | Oct 14, 2026

See all blogs