Blog posts by Matt Nield

Install EPiServer Composer on a SDK CMS Installation

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:06:37 GMT

I’m sure that, like a lot of people working with EPiServer I have a play area that I use to try things out and start off any proof of concept work that I’m going to be implementing later on in various projects. For this, I use the SDK Installation of EPiServer CMS along with an [...]

Poor EPiServer SDK

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Now that I get to use EPiServer CMS v5, I’m having approximately 165.3% more fun that I was with version 4.6. I can actually find information about 5 easily on the internet, brilliant! What I do find dismally disappointing though is the state of the SDK. A great deal of it just lists methods or properties with no description. In honesty, I can find out more using reflector.net.

While I appreciate that the guys at EPiServer are doing some great work delivering a brilliant set of tools for us to work with, I can’t help but think that someone should be updating the SDK with a little more vigor.

Registering Page Event Handlers in EPiServer

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:04:50 GMT

I’ve been working on a couple of things lately in EPiServer that I want to be able to easily re-use on other projects. From my point of view that means just dropping DLLs in folders and letting EPiServer do as much of the work as possible. One of my little pieces of functionality needs to happen when a page has been published. There are a couple of ways to do this, and previously I have been doing it in globla.ascx. Today I cam across an blog by Allen Thraen on discussing the subject of how to register DataFactory event handlers in EPiServer which describes in much better detail than I can about the different methods that can be used.

I ended up using the last method he mentions as I find it the cleanest way forward. I would copy the code in here, but you should go read his blog about it in honesty as its full of interesting stuff as always. The key point is that any class that inherits from EPiServer.PlugIn.PlugInAttribute and has a void Start() method will be called by EPiServer in the plug-in loading mechanism.

The thing to keep in mind is that (as per Allen’s example code), if you register a PublishedEvent handler, it will happen when any page is published. That being the case, you’ll need to be inventive with filtering your exact requirements in the event handler making sure that you only do what you want when you want to! Common sense I suppose.

I then got to thinking, “Hey, if I can do this then how messy is this potentially going to get if anyone can register and event handler?”. It would be pretty difficult to get a handle on what is going on. Luckily, Andres Hattestad has got a solution for this that reports which events are registered, and where. I’m trying that out just now, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be awesome and make my life a lot easier over the coming weeks, as I have a lot of plug-ins that I want to build.

I strongly suggest that you going and read Anders’s and Allen’s posts and adorn them with due praise for being clever and of a sharing nature :)

ASP.Net: Consuming RSS Feeds

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:50:32 GMT

I was recently working on an EPiServer solution and the client wanted to include an RSS feed on certain pages of their site. I though I would write out here how I consumed the feed. You’ll want to add error handling etc in here, as this is as rough as a tramps beard whilst being enough for you to get the point.

The first thing I had to do was to find out how RSS is structured. After a little Google search I found an article explaining the structure of RSS in sufficient detail for me to continue.

The first thing that I did was create a struck to contain the configuration that I wanted, fairly simple:

    /// <summary>

    /// RSS feed configuration.

    /// </summary>

    [Serializable]

    struct PropertyRssFeedData

        private string feedLocation;

        private bool linkTitle;

        private bool displayRssImage;

        private int numberofItemstoDisplay;

        public string FeedLocation { get { return this.feedLocation; } set { this.feedLocation = value; } }

        public bool LinkTitle { get { return this.linkTitle; } set { this.linkTitle = value; } }

        public bool DisplayRssImage { get { return this.displayRssImage; } set { this.displayRssImage = value; } }

        public int NumberofItemstoDisplay { get { return this.numberofItemstoDisplay; } set { this.numberofItemstoDisplay = value; } }

        public PropertyRssFeedData(string url, int numItems, bool linkTitle, bool rssIcon)

            this.feedLocation = url;

            this.numberofItemstoDisplay = numItems;

            this.linkTitle = linkTitle;

            this.displayRssImage = rssIcon;

An instance of this will be serialized/deserialized as versions of the page are edited/created in EPiServer. Essentially I just use it to determine how to render my HTML that I will present to the end-user. Actually reading the RSS is pretty straight forward (this is really being posted as a reminder for me, but might be useful for others). The following code creates a simple HTML block to present our feed.

#region render links and things

internalData = DeserializeData((string)PropertyData.Value);

// Go get the feed

XmlTextReader rssReader = new XmlTextReader(internalData.FeedLocation);

XmlDocument rssDoc = new XmlDocument();

rssDoc.Load(rssReader);

// Look for the <rss> tag

XmlNode nodeRss = rssDoc.SelectSingleNode("//rss");

// ensure we have an RSS node before we continue

if (nodeRss != null)

    // OK, start creating controls

    StringBuilder htmlResult = new StringBuilder();

    htmlResult.Append("<div id=\"rssFeed\">" + Environment.NewLine);

    // Look for the <channel> tag

    XmlNode nodeChannel = nodeRss.SelectSingleNode("//channel");

    #region Feed title

    htmlResult.Append("\t<div id=\"rssFeedTitle\">");

    if (internalData.LinkTitle)

        htmlResult.AppendFormat(

            "<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>",

            nodeChannel["link"].InnerText,

            nodeChannel["title"].InnerText

);

    else

        htmlResult.Append(nodeChannel["title"].InnerText);

    htmlResult.Append("</div>" + Environment.NewLine);

    #endregion

    #region items

    // get the kiddies

    if (nodeChannel != null)

        XmlNodeList itemNodes = nodeChannel.SelectNodes("//item");

        if (itemNodes.Count > 0)

            htmlResult.Append("\t<ul>" + Environment.NewLine);

            // we only want to display the maximum set in the

            // configuration (otherwise ofc, we coudl use foreach here

            for(int counter = 0; counter < internalData.NumberofItemstoDisplay; counter++)

                htmlResult.Append("\t\t<li>");

                // Display the icon or not

                if (internalData.DisplayRssImage)

                    // TODO : find a better way of displaying this

                    htmlResult.AppendFormat(

                        "<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>",

                        itemNodes[counter]["link"].InnerText,

                        String.Format(

                            "<img src=\"{0}\">{1}",

                            "/rssIcon.gif",

                            itemNodes[counter]["title"].InnerText

);

                else

                    htmlResult.AppendFormat(

                        "<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>",

                        itemNodes[counter]["link"].InnerText,

                        itemNodes[counter]["title"].InnerText

);

                htmlResult.Append("\t\t</li>");

            htmlResult.Append("\t</ul>");

    #endregion

    Literal output = new Literal();

    output.Text = htmlResult.ToString();

    this.Controls.Add(output);

else

    // NO RSS TAG

#endregion

While I could write about creating the property in EPiServer and wrapping it up all nicely. I’ll be honest, it’s just a PropertyString, so not worth worrying about. Ye sits rough and not very good at the error handling (as I eluded to above), but this is the easy bit. I now have to go and port this back to EPiServer CMS 4.6!

Developing with EPiServer

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:52:41 GMT

I often get asked to provide a handy starting guide to new people joining the company/team. It's pretty straight forward to find on the EPiServer World site if you look under the Get Started tab.

Just follow the link to Start Developing with EPiServer CMS 5 R2 for some articles explaining the basics and video presentations too.

I would also recommend having a look at Relate+, which is a great addition to EPiServer CMS for building community-themed web sites. Again, there is some useful documentation about this in the Get Started tab under Start Developing with Relate+.

Enjoy!

EPiServer: The trust relationship between the primary domain and the trusted domain failed

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:07:56 GMT

I'm still fairly new to EPiServer, so I'm going through the process of a great many rookie errors whilst taking over a site from someone with vastly more knowledge of the product than me.

One issue I had recently was when I was creating a new stage server for a client so that they could test things out. I went through a cobbled route of copying their live DB and live code and slapping them on to of a clean EPiServer install and hacking about in the web.config file to get it all working. The in itself was a piece of cake.

I started getting problems when the AD users could not connect tot he site. I checked and rechecked the LDAP settings in the web.config and they were all correct. After a quick look on EPiServer World, I found an FAQ explaining the problem, though I could not manage to get the workarounds to provide the goods.

The problem is not caused by EPiServer, it is how the .Net framework deals with AD when it is not connected to the domain. Now that I knew a little more about what the cause of the problem might be, I hit Google to try and find a resolution. Eventually a came across this forum entry which gave a possible solution. The long story short is that bay changing the Local Policy on the server and rebooting.

To make the change, follow the steps below:

Go to 'Local Security Policy' on the server through the Administrative Tools.
Expand 'Local Policies' and then click on 'Security Options' to see the list of security policies.
Select the 'Interactive Logon: Number of previous logons to cache' policy.
In the properties, set the cache value to 0.

This stops the OS for caching user details between logins, forcing the server to connect to the domain. After quick reboot, this fixes the problem.