Blog posts by Henrik Molnes

Disable rendring of a block based on it's content

2014-10-17T07:50:00.0000000Z

Let's say we have a block defined like below. The problem that need to be solved occurs when the property ContentBlockLink is pointing to a page that the user does not have access to. Could be because of StartPublish, role membership or something else. Then the whole block should not be visible for the user.

Instead of having the don't-render-me logic in the view, factory or the controller, the best place to disable the rendering would in fact be inside the Render() method of IContentRendrer. This method is respoinsible for rendering all blocks. Could be done like this:

To be able to use CustomContentRenderer you need to swap it with the default ContentRendrer. This is done by using dependency injection. A good example on doing it with StructureMap is seen here:
https://github.com/kennethdevik/alloytechazure/blob/master/AlloyTechAzure/Business/Initialization/DependencyResolverInitialization.cs

Custom validation of properties in EPiServer 7

2014-10-09T16:00:00.0000000Z

In EPiServer 7 (and newer versions) developers can easlily validate input from editors and display a message. There are 3 different severities:

ValidationErrorSeverity.Info
ValidationErrorSeverity.Warning
ValidationErrorSeverity.Error (Page cannot be saved)

Implementing custom validation of properties in code can be done in two different ways:

Validation of all properties that are assigned with a custom attribute. This only supports ValidationErrorSeverity.Error
Validation of properties that exists on a specific pagetype. Supports all 3 severities.

Using VppMigrationTool returns exception (Could not load file or assembly..)

2014-02-17T10:56:39.0000000Z

This is migth be a bit too specific, but when using the VppMigrationTool to migrate files to EPiServer 7.5 I got this error when trying to connect to the site:

Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Users\pa_hemo\Downloads\EPiServer_7.5_VppMigrationTool\VppMigrationTool_20140107.1\VppMigrationTool.exe' or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515) at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)

At the bottom of the exception you get a little hint, but it took me

some minutes to figure it out. The solution is to add the config settings below in to your Machine.config-file:

<configuration>
   <runtime>
      <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true"/>
   </runtime>
</configuration>

This did the trick for me :)

You can also change the VppMigrationTool.exe.config to look like this:

 <?xml version="1.0"?> 
 <configuration> 
    <startup>  
         <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 
    </startup> 
    <runtime>          
         <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true"/> 
    </runtime>  
 </configuration>

PS: You should also be aware that VppMigrationTool removes the config-settings from web.config for the folders you choose migrate.