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How do you explicitly set a Dynamic Property to a null value?
Hi Dean!
As you describe the default behaviour is to have defined/not defined for a dynamic property and go up in the parent chain until we find a defined value. If you want to have a "null from this point" value you probably need to create a custom property that has the posibility to store a value that is treated as null in your code. Since the Link Collection uses xml to store and load it's value I think that this can be a bit tricky but perhaps you can override the set and get value methods for the Link Collection and same some "magic" xml for a null value, otherwise just call the base implementation.
Another alternative could be to just create another property that holds a "defined/not defined" state and create a wrapper that takes both properties into consideration.
None of the alternatives are very nice but since EPiServer does not have built in support for the moment I think you are stuck with making some kind of work around.
Regards
Linus Ekström
EPiServer Development Team
May 25, 2011 7:23
You could define your link collection property on a page type and use a dynamic property to point to different instances of that page type. When you want the empty link collection you simply redefine the dynamic property to point to a page which has an empty link collection. Still not pretty, but you don't have to override any code and/or create a custom property type.
May 25, 2011 9:33
What if I want a Dynamic Property to have a null value at a certain point? If I enter nothing, then the value "full upward" to its parent. In most cases, this is what you want. But in this case, I want to explicitly set it to a null value.
My property, in this situation, is a Link Collection. The only way this returns null is to not add any links to it. But then it just pulls its parent value.