Using the new features in Community 4.0 to ... - EPiServer World

Developing with Community 4 / Relate+ 2
Håkan Lindqvist, Community Team

2
Agenda
» Brief EPiServer Community introduction
» What’s new in Community 4 / Relate+ 2
» A more in-depth look at a few of the new features
» Live Demo (some Visual Studio fun)
» Questions

3
EPiServer Community introduction
» The core Community platform
» APIs that handle data storage, caching, aggregation,
etc

4
EPiServer Community overall architecture
Site / services / other (eg Relate+)
Moderation / Admin
Community – MyPage, Blog, Forum, Club, etc.
Custom
Framework functionality – Tags, Comments, Categories, etc.
Core functionality – Caching, database access, etc.
Database
Disk storage

5
EPiServer Community basics: Create
» Example: Add a blog entry for the current user
Blog userBlog = MyPageHandler.Instance.
GetMyPage(SecurityHandler.Instance.CurrentUser).Blog;
Entry entry = new Entry(userBlog, "header", "body",
new UserAuthor(SecurityHandler.Instance.CurrentUser))
{ Status = EntityStatus.Pending };
entry = BlogHandler.Instance.AddEntry(entry);

6
EPiServer Community basics: Read
» Example: Get a paged list
int totalItems;
EntryCollection entries = BlogHandler.Instance.
GetEntries(userBlog, EntryPublishState.Published, 1, 5,
out totalItems, new EntrySortOrder(EntrySortField.Created,
Common.Sorting.SortingDirection.Descending));
» Example: Get a specific entry by ID
entry = BlogHandler.Instance.GetEntry(7000);

7
EPiServer Community basics: Update
» Example: Update a blog entry
entry = entry.Clone() as Entry;
entry.Status = EntityStatus.Approved;
BlogHandler.Instance.UpdateEntry(entry);
entry = BlogHandler.Instance.GetEntry(entry.ID);

8
EPiServer Community basics: Delete
» Example: Remove an entry (permanently)
BlogHandler.Instance.RemoveEntry(entry);
» Example: Soft-remove an entry (can be restored)
entry = entry.Clone() as Entry;
entry.Status = EntityStatus.Removed;
BlogHandler.Instance.UpdateEntry(entry);

9
Community basics: EntityProvider
» Configuration maps types to providers
EntityProviderHandler.Instance.
GetEntityProvider(typeof(Entry)).
AddEntityInstance(new Entry(...));
entry = EntityProviderHandler.Instance.
GetEntityProvider(typeof(Entry)).
GetEntityInstance(typeof(Entry), 7000) as Entry;
EntityProviderHandler.Instance.
GetEntityProvider(typeof(Entry)).
UpdateEntityInstance(entry);
EntityProviderHandler.Instance.
GetEntityProvider(typeof(Entry)).
RemoveEntityInstance(entry);

What’s new in Community 4
10

11
Some visitor-visible features overview
» Full Text Search
» RSS/Atom feeds
» RSS/Atom syndication
» Metaweblog API publishing
» HTML filtering
» OpenID

12
Developer features
» IContent interface
» Owner system
» Site object has been eliminated
» Category system replaces Site, fetch entities by
category
» Handlers singletons instead of static
» URI providers
» Event Counter

13
Developer features (continued)
» EntityStatus
» EntitySecurity
» EntityProvider system has been extended to do not
only read but CRUD
» EntityReference
» GUIDs as an alternative means of referencing entities

14
Changed site setup
» Switched to log4net based logging
» EPiServer Events utilized in cluster environments
(Cache notifications, etc)
» Utilizes EPiServer Framework siteHostMapping for
multi-site, ”enterprise”, configurations.
» Starts as an EPiServer Framework initialization
module.
» User integration simplified

An in-depth look at some new features
15

16
IContent – consistency, generic handling
» Dictates generic content properties
public interface IContent : IEntity, ..., ILocalized
{
IAuthor Author { get; set; }
string Body { get; set; }
DateTime Created { get; }
string Header { get; set; }
DateTime Modified { get; }
}
public interface ILocalized
{
string LanguageID { get; set; }
}

17
Owner system
» Creates relationship between arbitrary entities
» An entity can only have a single owner
» Owned entities are removed when owner is removed
» Example: Set ownership
imageGallery.OwnedBy.Entity = entry;
imageGallery.OwnedBy.Context = "special_blog_pictures";
ImageGalleryHandler.Instance.UpdateImageGallery(imageGallery);

18
Owner system (continued)
» Example: Get specific owned object, or all owned
objects for a specific entity
EntityReference galleryReference =
OwnerHandler.Instance.GetOwnedObject(entry,
"special_blog_pictures");
IDictionary owned =
OwnerHandler.Instance.GetObjectsByOwner(imageGallery);
galleryReference = owned["special_blog_pictures"];
imageGallery = galleryReference.GetEntity() as
ImageGallery;

20
GUIDs for entities
» UniqueID property on entities
» Can get EntityReference by GUID
» Useful when reference has to be persisted
Guid entryGuid = entry.UniqueID;
EntityReference entryReference = EntityProviderHandler.Instance.
GetEntityReference(entryGuid);
entry = entryReference.GetEntity() as Entry;

21
Full Text Search overview
» Implemented as client/service
» Search client included in EPiServer Framework
» Site pushes data to index, no crawling
» Protocol open (essentially Atom feeds sent in a
REST-like fashion)
» Default service implementation included, based on
Lucene.net

22
Full Text Search in Community
» Community entities, as specified by type name in the
configuration are indexed taking values from
IContent, then any specifics on a type by type basis
» Relate+ extends this by also indexing CMS pages
and files which become searchable through the same
interface

23
EntitySecurity
» Example: Give Read and Modify permission to user:
EntitySecurityHandler.Instance.
SetAccessRights(entry, user,
new EntryAccessRights()
{ Read = true, Modify = true });
» Example: Check if user has Read permission:
bool hasAccess = EntitySecurityHandler.Instance.
CheckAccess(entry, user,
new EntryAccessRights()
{ Read = true });

24
Demo
» Demo

25
Questions
» Questions
» hakan.lindqvist@episerver.com