Hi Alf,

I think this would be a very nice feature to have in the system. I've had a quick go at getting a crude version of it on a test site (I used Quicksilver). I've made some progress getting it working with a ?version= query string simply running on the start page as you will see below. Obviously, it's just a testbed implementation, and once it's actually fully working it could be abstracted to an Attribute or helper.

public ViewResult Index(StartPage currentPage, string version = "")
{
    var viewModel = new StartPageViewModel()
    {
        StartPage = currentPage,
        Promotions = GetActivePromotions()
    };

    // Check for AB test override flag
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(version))
    {
        var testManager = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ITestManager>();
        var contentLoader = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IContentLoader>();

        var tests = testManager.GetActiveTestsByOriginalItemId(currentPage.ContentGuid);
        if (tests?.Count > 0)
        {
            // We found the test for this page, lets load the content versions of this page also
            var contentVersionRepo = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IContentVersionRepository>();
            var pageVersions = contentVersionRepo.List(currentPage.ContentLink);

            // Make sure we found page versions
            if (pageVersions?.Count() > 0)
            {
                if (string.Equals(version, "a", System.StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                {
                    // Look for the first 'A' test version of the page
                    var testItemVersion = tests[0]?.Variants[0]?.ItemVersion;

                    var pageVersionWeWant = pageVersions?.Where(w => w?.ContentLink?.WorkID == testItemVersion)?.First();
                    if (pageVersionWeWant != null)
                    {
                        viewModel.StartPage = contentLoader.Get<StartPage>(pageVersionWeWant.ContentLink);
                    }
                }

                if (string.Equals(version, "b", System.StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                {
                    // Look for the first 'B' test version of the page
                    var testItemVersion = tests[0]?.Variants[1]?.ItemVersion;

                    var pageVersionWeWant = pageVersions?.Where(w => w?.ContentLink?.WorkID == testItemVersion)?.First();
                    if (pageVersionWeWant != null)
                    {
                        viewModel.StartPage = contentLoader.Get<StartPage>(pageVersionWeWant.ContentLink);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return View(viewModel);
}

It works perfectly if the user is logged in to the CMS (even in other tabs, so they have a session) but unfortunately, I can't get the ContentLoader to return the challenger (B) version of the content when logged out. The B version has a VersionStatus of Published (enum 4) instead of CheckedOut (enum 2) that usual content (and version A) has once actually published.

I took a quick peek at the ContentLoader/ContentRepositry code for some sort of a flag we can give it to get unpublished versions of pages using the Work ID in the ContentReference we already have here, but I could not find anything. I even gave the old DataFactory a try to no avail.

Perhaps someone else has a way to get the "Published" (not "CheckedOut") page content. Hypothetically you could use a logged in user account and cache it but that gets messy real quick.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or can think of a suitable way to get this going.

Cheers,

Jacob.

Part Two, the saga continues.

I've now got it working reliably with a different (somewhat more hackey) approach where I override the AB testing cookie based on the QS flag.

// Check for AB test override flag, accepts any string for A test, "b" for B test
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(version))
{
    var testManager = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ITestManager>();

    var tests = testManager.GetActiveTestsByOriginalItemId(currentPage.ContentGuid);
    if (tests?.Count > 0)
    {
        // Get the AB cookie for this page
        var abCookie = HttpContext.Response.Cookies[$"EPI-MAR-{currentPage.ContentGuid.ToString().ToLower()}_{Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture}"];
        if (abCookie != null)
        {
            // Default to "A" test content
            var versionId = 0;

            // update to "B" if set
            if (string.Equals(version, "b", System.StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                versionId = 1;

            // Update the response cookie
            abCookie.Value = $"start={DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(1).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss")}&vId{versionId}=&viewed=False&converted=False&k0=False";
            Response.SetCookie(abCookie);
        }
    }
}

Due to browser caching it does look like you need to do an extra page reload when switching between test versions (A to B or vice versa). Seems to work well otherwise.

Let me know if this solves your problem.

Cheers,

Jacob