Creating custom property derived from EPiServer.Core.PropertyData

Nikolay Raychev

Vote:

Hi, I'm new to Episerver. I just downloaded and installed Episerver 5. I need to create a custom property that contains several types of data. For example string, enumeration, and several integer fileds. I created a new custom property using the VS2005 toolbox controls. I saw that I have to implement ParseToObject and ParseToSelf which accept a string as a parameter. What is the format of this string? Is it a serialized object or what? I can't find any information about this in the documentation that came with the installation. Thanks in advance. Nikolay Raychev ProPeople

#15929

Dec 13, 2007 14:23

Nikolay Raychev

Vote:

And somthing more...


        public override EPiServer.Core.PropertyDataType Type
        {
            get
            {
                
                // TODO: Write code that returns the PropertyDataType this property is based on. 
            }
        }

When I'm creating a custom property it seems that I must provide the base property type, which is an enumeration of the existing property types in Episerver. But the reason I'm deriving from EPiServer.Core.PropertyData is that I want to create completely new property type not derived from the existing ones. Where is the pint? Am I missing somthing? Nikolay Raychev ProPeople

#16654

Dec 13, 2007 16:25

Linus Ekström

Vote:

Hi! EPiServer has a list of base types that you have to use to store property data. If you have a more complex type that you want to store I would use the longstring type and save the data as xml. It's possible that you can serialize a class as well but I havn't tried that myself.

#16655

Dec 13, 2007 17:31

Nikolay Raychev

Vote:

Anyway, I made it using long string and used serialization to store my clas as XML. It works fine. But this issue remains... If I just want to make a property from scratch derived from EPiServer.Core.PropertyData why should I set EPiServer.Core.PropertyDataType that shows the base property type(one of the existing) when my new property type does not derive fron none of them?

#16656

Dec 21, 2007 15:51

Linus Ekström

Vote:

Hi! Use PropertyDataType.LongString is you want to store it as xml (or String if it's shorter than 255 characters). This is used to define which column and type that should be used to save the value for the property.

#16657

Jan 07, 2008 13:59

Kjetil Simensen

Vote:

Hi,

I just wanted to add that i've managed to store a seializable class in a LongString property. Just in case anyone wondered if it would work :)

My code:

[Serializable]
Public class yourObject
{
..
}

Functions to store and collect data:

public static string SerializeUsersForPage(List<yourObject> objectList)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb);
            XmlSerializer seri = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List< yourObject >));
            seri.Serialize(sw, objectList);
            sw.Close();
            return sw.ToString() ?? string.Empty;
        }

public static List< yourObject > GetUsersForPage(PageData page)
        {
            if (page["yourPropName"] == null)return new List< yourObject >();
            string sb = page["yourPropName "] as string;
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(sb)) return new List< yourObject >();
            XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer( typeof(List< yourObject >) );
            List< yourObject > objectList = (List< yourObject >)s.Deserialize(new StringReader(sb));
            return objectList ?? new List< yourObject >();
        }

#24637

Oct 02, 2008 16:23