RichardSoeteman.net

Recently I’ve developed a rather large website for a customer. To make the structure as simple as possible to understand I like to use different Icons for each document type. I was very happy with the FamFamFam Icons project from The Farm. After Installing this I got another challenge and that was to pick the right Icon.

Today I started working on a new project, installed the FamFamFam Icons package again and thought that it would be better to assign document types to the Image instead of assigning the image to a document type. I’ve created a small Usercontrol that lists all the icons (except for the default Umbraco sprites). Next to the Icon you find  a dropdown with the possible documenttypes which you can select.

I did not create a package out of this. It’s working for me, but it needs some improvements before I can add it to our.umbraco.org.  Maybe that  will never happen, so attached you find a zip file. Add the IconPickerDashboard.dll file to your bin folder, the IconPickerDashboard.ascx to your usercontrol folder.

Add the following section to your  the Dashboard.config file.

    <section>
        <areas>
            <area>settings</area>
        </areas>
        <tab caption="IconPicker">
            <control>/usercontrols/IconPickerDashboard.ascx</control>
        </tab>
    </section>

Now browse to the settings section and select the icons you like.

Download the zip (Requires .net 3.5).

Or download the source:

I’m very pleased to announce that CMSImport 1.0.3 is released. Now I can hear you think CMSImport? Must be a fork of the great UmbImport package. No this isn’t the case. A few weeks back Niels (AKA @Umbraco) asked me to change the name since Umbraco HQ got a lot of requests about this package. So now the name is CMSImport and that’s not going to change anymore.

CMSImport PRO

Finally we’ve finished our commercial edition of CMSImport.  CMSImport PRO gives you all the options of the default package and the following extra features:

• Update Content
• Save Import Steps
• Schedule imports for a certain time and day

Pricing

You can buy a single domain license of CMSImport. With a single domain license you are allowed to use  CMSImport PRO for a single domain and all subdomains, such as www.example.com, accept.example.com, and local.example.com.

We also have a Enterprise license available. With an Enterprise license you are allowed to install the CMSImport PRO on unlimited production web servers, and use it for unlimited Umbraco instances within the Enterprise. 

A single domain license will be available for  99 Euro, an enterpise license for 389 euro.

When you buy a license you’ll get free updates within 90 days of purchase and  free updates for all minor releases within a major release.  For example, if you purchased a  1.0 version of CMSImport, you get free updates of all 1.x versions through our client area.

Special 1.0 offer.When you buy the 1.0 release you’ll get a free update to 2.x. This is a 1.0 offer only!

What’s more in this release?

Several issues are solved in this release(both in the free and Pro release):

• "item with the same key already added" error when using duplicate column names
• Automapping column names
• The imported document creator is not always the administrator anymore. It's using the logged in user now. When you schedule an import you can select the user that should be used as the creator of the document
• Special characters in CSV are now supported, we’ve changed the reader from ANSI text to Unicode
• Sometimes CSV replaced spaces with empty strings, this is solved now
• With member import you can now merge any member property into the template. Simply surround the member property with [#(property here)]
• Using a renamed Umbraco folder. This is possible now, although it will be better to change it after install, otherwise you have to install manually.
• We’ve removed the limitation to allow only one DataAdapter. We are thinking to build a DataAdapter pack which contains adapters to import from wordpress, Rss, Outlook, excel etc. These adapters will be available for free in the Commercial Edition and for a small fee for the Free edition.

Roadmap

In the 1.x version we will add the following functionality:

• FieldAdapters. Sounds boring but this is a big thing. When you import data now, sometimes the import will fail. For example if you import boolean as text (true/false) and want to store that in a True/False field in Umbraco it will fail. Umbraco expects that the value will be 0/1. FieldAdapters will solve this problem. If a insert of data fails. CMSImport will check if 1 o more FieldAdapters are available to convert the data in the right format. This will be added to version 1.1 which must be ready before CodeGarden 2010.
• Dictionary Import. Need I say more?
• Hierarchical imports(PRO only).

In the 2.x version we will add the following functionality:

• Hierarchical import support in Data Adapters. Not the same as the 1.x Hierarchical import feature
• Export/import definitions (PRO only). An easy way to deploy Import definitions

More Info

For more info, download, or purchase you’ll go to http://www.cmsimport.com/

Just a small blogpost to announce that I’ve just made a new release of the Package Action Contrib project. The following actions are added to the project:

• AddConfigurationSection
• PermissionForApp
• AddLanguageFileKey
• MoveFile
• UpdateAppTree

You can download the new release and documentation from codeplex. I’ve also updated the WIKI page on our.umbraco.org.

Many thanks to the contributors of this release, Simon Dingley, Chris Houston, Dirk de Grave and Søren Spelling Lund for submitting their code!

This forum post  triggered me to share some code that I had. A while back I was building a site which  let the customers define their own custom overviews One requirement was that users could define the sort by property . To do this you can use the property picker but it wasn’t friendly enough for my case so I ended up building a custom macro parameter type.

To start you need to create a new class library and add references to the following assemblies:

• Businesslogic
• Cms
• Interfaces
• Umbraco
• System.web

In the example below I’ve created a class that inherits from dropdownlist. This was the easiest way since I needed a dropdownlist and didn’t want to play with the control tree, Now more important is that this class inherits from the IMacroGuiRendering Interface.  This add two properties ShowCaption, to show the caption on the parameters tab and more important value which holds the selected value . 

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:  using System.Text;

   4:  using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

   5:  using umbraco.interfaces;

   6:   

   7:  namespace MacroRenderDemo

   8:  {

   9:      public class OrderBy : DropDownList, IMacroGuiRendering

  10:      {

  11:          protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)

  12:          {

  13:              base.OnLoad(e);

  14:              if (this.Items.Count == 0)

  15:              {

  16:                  this.Items.Add(new ListItem("Title", "nodeName"));

  17:                  this.Items.Add(new ListItem("Date", "createDate"));

  18:              }

  19:          }

  20:   

  21:          #region IMacroGuiRendering Members

  22:   

  23:          public bool ShowCaption

  24:          {

  25:              get { return true; }

  26:          }

  27:   

  28:          public string Value

  29:          {

  30:              get

  31:              {

  32:                  return this.SelectedValue;

  33:              }

  34:              set

  35:              {

  36:                  this.SelectedValue = value;

  37:              }

  38:          }

  39:   

  40:          #endregion

  41:      }

  42:  }

When you build the project and add the binary into the bin folder of your Umbraco site you still can’t select the new type from the parameter type list. First we need to register the class  in the database. Below you’ll see the database table that holds all the Macro property types.

It is important that you add the Assemblyname  including the namespace to the macroPropertyTypeRenderAssembly column and add the name of your class to the  macroPropertyTypeRenderAssembly column .

Now we can use the parameter in our macro’s

and off course we can now use the new parameter in our template when we select the macro

Another example how flexible Umbraco is. If a requirement isn’t available out of the box, usuallyall it takes is to implement an interface and write a few lines of code.

Let’s start with wishing you all the best for 2010. 2009 was an insane year for me, I had given myself one year  being successful in business running my own Umbraco  projects instead of being a .net contractor. That turned out great, I’ve got a lot of new customers, have build a few great sites for my customers  and did a few Umbraco consulting jobs. So now it’s time to make plans for 2010.  First thing is that I’m moving to a real office instead of working from home. I’m really excited about this because I’m moving to an office building with lots of small companies, I think that’s really inspiring.

When I’ve started investigating Umbraco back in 2008 we had a small amount of companies in the Netherlands (mostly freelancers) that where building websites based on Umbraco. Nowadays I see new companies that build Umbraco websites every week, not only small shops but also really big agencies. For this year my focus will be on helping companies (worldwide) being successful implementing Umbraco sites for their clients by offering consultancy services and custom package development  instead of building sites from front to end.

As you might know I’m also working for a long time on UmbImport PRO. My plan was to release this package last year. It’s the top prio on my todolist for Q1 this year. Also another package will see the light this year, UmbLinkChecker. As the name says this will be a package that checks every link in your published site, not only in content but also hard coded links in your templates etc., I will build a free and Pro version. Since Umbraco has more than 75000 active installs I think it’s profitable to build commercial packages for Umbraco and we will see more and more commercial packages from different vendors. Hope the Umbraco store will be back up in 2010 and filled with great products.

The last year I couldn’t find enough time to blog or write WIKI’s and helping the community with their problems on the forum. I’m hoping this year that will change, since I’ve got a lot of info that I’d like to share.

Have a great 2010!

Usually I develop websites that require login functionality for one or more roles, now this is all cool for my clients but it’s a nightmare for me because I simply can’t remember all the login and passwords. To make my life and other developers life’s a little bit easier I’ve developed the Memberswitcher package. This package let's you easily login members and switch between members by simply selecting a member from a pull down list instead of enter the username and password. It’s using a lower level asp.net membership method to login the member based on the username and is fully compatible with all the asp.net Membership controls. Also the methods to fill the Membergroup and Member pulldowns are using Membership methods, so it will work with the Umbraco members but also with other membership providers.

Once installed, an extra macro is added to the list. In your template select the Memberswitcher macro, optional specify a node to redirect to once logged in and that’s it.
<umbraco:Macro RedirectToNodeAfterLogin="" Alias="MemberSwitcher" runat="server"></umbraco:Macro>

When you visit the website you’ll see the control in action. First select the Membergroup and Member.

 
When you click the Login selected member button you’ll be logged in as you can see in the following screenshot that is using the asp.net LoginStatus control.

Needless to say:
DO NOT USE THIS PACKAGE IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT!!

Download the package here

A few weeks back I had this  issue when deploying a site. I needed to modify a documenttype to add a few properties and after a few minutes an error was raised and the only thing I could see when I deleted the property and saved the documenttype again, or opened a document based on that document type was the following error message (thanks Dan for the picture). 

Did I make a backup? ehh no, so I needed to fix this. Okay let’s look at  the error message again. An Object reference not set error is thrown while deleting the property. Love that Umbraco is open source and I can have a look at the source code. Below you see the method that is responsible for deleting the property from the documenttype.

   1:          public void delete()

   2:          {

   3:              // flush cache

   4:              FlushCache();

   5:   

   6:              // Delete all properties of propertytype

   7:              foreach(Content c in Content.getContentOfContentType(new ContentType(_contenttypeid)))

   8:              {

   9:                  c.getProperty(this).delete();

  10:              }

  11:              // Delete PropertyType ..

  12:              SqlHelper.ExecuteNonQuery("Delete from cmsPropertyType where id = " + this.Id);

  13:              this.InvalidateCache();

  14:          }

As you might have seen there is no check for null values on the 9 (c.getProperty(this).delete();). This is what caused the error while deleting the property. I assume it's sort of the same issue when opening a document. Now that I know this I can work on a solution. As I mentioned earlier, I needed to add properties to the document type. Below you find the code I’ve used to do that.

   1:   ContentType ct = ContentType.GetByAlias("_advertiser");

   2:          foreach (PropertyType i in ct.PropertyTypes)

   3:          {

   4:              if (i.Alias == "linkToSpecial")

   5:              {

   6:                  // Delete all properties of propertytype

   7:                  foreach (umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Content c in umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Content.getContentOfContentType(ct))

   8:                  {

   9:                      if (c.getProperty("linkToSpecial") == null)

  10:                      {

  11:                          c.addProperty(i, c.Version);

  12:                          c.Save();

  13:                      }

  14:                  }

  15:                  //Remove comment to delete the property from the doctype

  16:                  //i.delete();

  17:                  //ct.Save();

  18:              }

  19:          }

As you can see, I’ve used a  few hard coded values. _advertiser is the alias of the document type and linkToSpecial is the alias of the property that I wanted to add on the Document type. If you want to delete the property  remove  lines 9-13 and remove the comment on line 16 and 17. You can use this code in a usercontrol and use that usercontrol as a dashboard control. Needless to say, this code comes without a warranty.

I’ve added the issue to codeplex, please vote for it!. Hope this post is a nice work around for the issue.

Just a little quick tip. When you install Umbraco v4.0.2.1 (don't know about other versions) without runway and you publish your site, you will see a blank screen. This is because the data/umbraco.config file contains the runway site as you can see in the sample xml below. 

<!DOCTYPE umbraco[ &lt;!ELEMENT nodes ANY>  <!ELEMENT node ANY>  <!ATTLIST node id ID #REQUIRED> ]>
<root id="-1">
  <node id="1048" version="6f0d47e7-8cf1-43e5-a5ad-c687e0b78331" parentID="-1" level="1" writerID="0" 
creatorID="0" nodeType="1045" template="1042" sortOrder="2" 
createDate="2008-05-02T09:52:36" updateDate="2009-02-18T10:19:26" nodeName="Runway Homepage" 
urlName="runway-homepage" writerName="Administrator" 
creatorName="Administrator" nodeTypeAlias="RunwayHomepage" path="-1,1048">
    <data alias="bodyText"><![CDATA[<p>Runway gives you a bare-bones website that introduces you to a set of 
well-defined conventions for building an umbraco website.</p>
<p>The Runway website is very simple in form and provided without any design or functionality. 
By installing Runway, you&rsquo;
ll begin with a minimal site built on best practices. You&rsquo;ll also enjoy the benefits of 
speaking the same &ldquo;language&rdquo; 
as the rest of the umbraco community by using common properties and naming conventions.</p>
<p>Now that you know what Runway is, it is time to get started using Runway.</p>]]></data>
    <data alias="siteName">Runway</data>
    <data alias="siteDescription"><![CDATA[Off to a great start]]></data>
   .....................  </node>
</root>

Work around for this issue is to republish the entire site first. I've added this issue to codeplex. Please vote here.

I'm very pleased to announce that I finally released the V1 version of UmbImport. For those of you who don't know what UmbImport is:

UmbImport helps you import content or members from any datasource into Umbraco. The following datasources are supported by default:

• SQL Server
• CSV file
• XML file

You can also create your own custom DataAdapter. Check out the following links to screencasts to see the power of UmbImport. 

• Import content 
• Import members

The package is added to our.umbraco.org the new Umbraco community site , so you can download it there or use the UmbImport site. On our.umbraco.org you will find a forum also where you can drop your questions/feature requests/ bugs etc. In August I will release a manual also. If you find any issues please report it on the forum or comment on this post.

In February I wrote this blogpost which describes the process of how to add a menu item to the context menu using the Umbraco V4 Event system. In UmbImport PRO I've used this mechanism. When I was testing this I came across a bug in my code when using a pagepicker, this was showing an empty tree in the node picker.

Then I got a little flashback to the level 2 course I attended last November where Niels told us to check if there was a menu attached to the node (which is not the case for the pagepicker) before adding menu items to it, otherwise an exception is thrown what will result in an empty tree. This is what happened in my case. In the example below I've only added node.Menu!= null check and now everything is working fine.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   3:  using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

   4:  using umbraco.interfaces;

   5:   

   6:  namespace UnpublishAction

   7:  {

   8:      /// <summary>

   9:      /// Add unpublish to the menu item

  10:      /// </summary>

  11:      public class AddUnpublishActionEvent :ApplicationBase

  12:      {

  13:          public AddUnpublishActionEvent()

  14:          {

  15:              BaseContentTree.BeforeNodeRender += new BaseTree.BeforeNodeRenderEventHandler(BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender);

  16:          }

  17:   

  18:          /// <summary>

  19:          /// Before a menu item gets rendered  we will add the unpublish action if the document is published

  20:          /// </summary>

  21:          private void BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender(ref XmlTree sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)

  22:          {

  23:              ///Only unpublish when published

  24:              if (node.Menu!= null && !node.NotPublished.GetValueOrDefault(true))

  25:              {

  26:                  //Find the publish action and add 1 for the index

  27:                  int index = node.Menu.FindIndex(delegate(IAction a) { return a.Alias == "publish"; })+1;

  28:   

  29:                  //Insert unpublish action

  30:                  node.Menu.Insert(index, UnpublishAction.Instance);

  31:              }

  32:          }

  33:      }

  34:  }

  35:   

Download Source

Hope it didn't get you into trouble, sorry if it did.

As I mentioned earlier it's possible to create a custom data adapter which can be plugged into umbImport. The free edition supports one custom data adapter, the pro edition will support multiple adapters.  In this multi part series I will demonstrate how you can create your own data adapter by building an RSS import adapter. In this first part we will create the basic adapter in later post we will refine the functionality. For this first part I've installed Umbraco 4.0.1 and the packages Blog4Umbraco and UmbImport beta 1.

Create the adapter

You can create a custom data adapter by deriving from two classes:

• UmbImportLibrary.BaseTypes.ImportDataAdapter.
• UmbImportLibrary.BaseTypes.ImportDataUI.

The ImportDataAdapter class provides the real communication to the datasource and holds a reference to the ImportDataUI class which is responsible for the user input. For our RSS import adapter we will start by creating the UI class.

   1:      public class RSSDataAdapterUI : ImportDataUI

   2:      {

   3:          private Panel _rssContentPanel = new Panel();

   4:          private Literal _selectRssSourceLiteral = new Literal();

   5:          private TextBox _rssLocation = new TextBox();

   6:   

   7:          protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)

   8:          {

   9:              base.OnInit(e);

  10:   

  11:              _rssContentPanel.ID = "RssContentPanel";

  12:              _selectRssSourceLiteral.ID = "SelectRssSourceLiteral";

  13:              _selectRssSourceLiteral.Text = "Specify the RSSLocation";

  14:              _rssLocation.ID = "RssLocation";

  15:              _rssLocation.Width = 400;

  16:              _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<table><tr><td width=\"150\">"));

  17:              _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(_selectRssSourceLiteral);

  18:              _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</td><td>"));

  19:              _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(_rssLocation);

  20:              _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(" example http://feeds.feedburner.com/umbracoblog </td></tr></table>"));

  21:   

  22:              this.Controls.Add(_rssContentPanel);

  23:          }

  24:   

  25:          /// <summary>

  26:          /// Returns the Datasource

  27:          /// </summary>

  28:          public override string DataSource

  29:          {

  30:              get

  31:              {

  32:                  return _rssLocation.Text;

  33:   

  34:              }

  35:          }

  36:      }

The OnInit method generates the form. The only real interesting thing in this class is the datasource property. This will be used in UmbImport to initialize the import with the selected datasource.

   1:      public class RSSDataAdapter : ImportDataAdapter

   2:      {

   3:          private ImportDataUI _xmlImportUI;

   4:   

   5:          /// <summary>

   6:          /// Alias of the import adapter

   7:          /// </summary>

   8:          public override string Alias

   9:          {

  10:              get { return "RssImport"; }

  11:          }

  12:   

  13:          /// <summary>

  14:          /// Get XML Data

  15:          /// </summary>

  16:          /// <returns></returns>

  17:          public override IDataReader GetData()

  18:          {

  19:              return XmlToDataReader(DataSource, "//item");

  20:          }

  21:   

  22:          /// <summary>

  23:          /// Validates the selected datasource

  24:          /// </summary>

  25:          public override bool Validate()

  26:          {

  27:              bool result = false;

  28:              try

  29:              {

  30:                  using (IDataReader datareader = XmlToDataReader(DataSource, "//item"))

  31:                  {

  32:                      result = true;

  33:                  }

  34:              }

  35:              catch

  36:              {

  37:                  result = false;

  38:              }

  39:              return result;

  40:          }

  41:   

  42:          /// <summary>

  43:          /// Holds a reference to the UI control of the adapter

  44:          /// </summary>

  45:          public override ImportDataUI UIControl

  46:          {

  47:              get

  48:              {

  49:                  if (_xmlImportUI == null)

  50:                  {

  51:                      _xmlImportUI = new RSSDataAdapterUI();

  52:                      _xmlImportUI.ID = "RssImport";

  53:                  }

  54:                  return _xmlImportUI;

  55:              }

  56:          }

  57:      }

The Alias property will return the unique alias that we can use to select our adapter during the Import process. The GetData method will return a datareader initialized with the datasource. When importing XML it needs to be converted to a datareader first. The ImportDataAdapter Base class has a method XmlToDataReader what will convert the xml file to  a datareader. The Validate method will check if the selected datasource is valid. The UIControl property holds a reference to the RSSDataAdapterUI class. The ImportDataAdapter base class has more properties/methods that you can override but for this data adapter we are done.

When you compile the project and put the DLL in the bin folder of the Umbraco install the DLL will be picked up automatically by UmbImport.

Using the RSS import adapter

When you start UmbImport you will see in step 2 that you can select the RssImport data adapter

In the next step we will see the form that we have created in the RSSDataAdapterUI class. Here we can specify the RSS location.

In the Next step we can specify the location where to store the blogposts (Note: When using the Blog package blogposts will be arranged by data automatically) and we select the blogpost as document type.  In step 5 we will create the mapping between the fields from the RSS feed and the Umbraco Document Properties. You will see a lot of other fields from the RSS Feed. Just ignore them for now. In a later post we will filter the columns.

The result

When you click next and next again on the confirm screen the RSS feed will be imported.

In the next post I will show you how to Import the comment data with the same Adapter. I will also show you how to filter the columns for the property mapping dropdowns. When you want to play with this import adapter then  download the source here.

Last week I had a meeting with Nico Lubbers and we discussed the possibility of adding Dictionary Items on the fly. You can read in this post from Tim that it's been done before, but we want to make sure that it works in every situation (Template, Usercontrol and Xslt) and we don't want a baseclass for just adding items to the dictionary . Also we want logical keys (like savebuttonText, companynameLabel etc.) instead of generated keys. Basically we want the pain of adding  the dictionary items in the templates, usercontrols and xslt's  but we don't want the pain of adding  the dictionary items in Umbraco manually. Now before your read on I must warn you that the solution is not based on an architecture

What happens if Umbraco can't find a dictionary item?

When you add a dictionary item on a template, usercontrol or XSLT and Umbraco can't find it an exception is thrown. Umbraco will catch that exception and write it to the tracelog. For this blogpost I've used a standard Umbraco 4.0.1 instance with Runway and the modules contact form and standard navigation installed. In the example below I'be added a few non existing Dictionary items to my code.

Template

<umbraco:Item field="#Template_DetailHeader" runat="server"></umbraco:Item>

XSLT

<xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:GetDictionaryItem('XSLT_FromDictionary')"/>

Usercontrol Markup

<%=umbraco.library.GetDictionaryItem("UserControl_Details") %>

Usercontrol Codebehind

lb_name.Text = umbraco.library.GetDictionaryItem("UserControl_LabelCaption"); 

Now when you view the page you will see empty places instead of the dictionary values. What's more interesting is to view the page with the queryparameter ?umbdebugshowtrace=true what shows you the trace info of the page like the image below.

How can we get that data?

While it's nice that we can view the data, it would be great if we can parse the trace info and automatically add the missing dictionary items. This can be done using a Trace Listener, when an item is added to the trace you can configure 1 or more trace listeners that recieve the message then we can parse. In the  Class below I derive from the TraceListener class. The TraceListener methods calls the AddItemUnknown method which check the message with a regular expression. If the message can be parsed the unknow dictionary key is retrieved from the message and will be added to Umbraco. To ensure we will see the value when we refresh the page the key will also be added as the value for every language.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Diagnostics;

   3:  using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

   4:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   5:  using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.language;

   6:   

   7:  namespace SoetemanSoftware.Tools

   8:  {

   9:      public class AddUnknownDictionaryItemsListener : TraceListener

  10:      {

  11:          public override void Fail(string message)

  12:          {

  13:              AddItemWhenUnknown(message);

  14:          }

  15:   

  16:          public override void Fail(string message, string detailMessage)

  17:          {

  18:              AddItemWhenUnknown(message);

  19:          }

  20:   

  21:          public override void Write(string message)

  22:          {

  23:              AddItemWhenUnknown(message);

  24:          }

  25:   

  26:          public override void WriteLine(string message)

  27:          {

  28:              AddItemWhenUnknown(message);

  29:          }

  30:          public override void WriteLine(string message, string category)

  31:          {

  32:              AddItemWhenUnknown(message);

  33:          }

  34:   

  35:          /// <summary>

  36:          /// Parse at the message 

  37:          /// </summary>

  38:          /// <param name="message"></param>

  39:          private void AddItemWhenUnknown(string message)

  40:          {

  41:              try

  42:              {

  43:                  Match match = Regex.Match(message, "(Error returning dictionary item ')(.*)(' --)", RegexOptions.Multiline);

  44:                  if (match.Groups.Count > 1)

  45:                  {

  46:                      //Get key from the mach collection

  47:                      string key = match.Groups[2].Value;

  48:                      //Check if key is allready in Umbraco

  49:                      if (!umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Dictionary.DictionaryItem.hasKey(key))

  50:                      {

  51:                          //Add new key with default value to Umbraco

  52:                          int dictionaryID = umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Dictionary.DictionaryItem.addKey(key, string.Format("[{0}]", key));

  53:   

  54:                          var dictionaryItem = new umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Dictionary.DictionaryItem(dictionaryID);

  55:                          foreach (Language l in Language.getAll)

  56:                          {

  57:                              dictionaryItem.setValue(l.id, string.Format("[{0}]", key));

  58:                          }

  59:                          dictionaryItem.Save();

  60:                      }

  61:                  }

  62:              }

  63:              catch (Exception ex)

  64:              {

  65:                  //Logic may never break on this Listener

  66:                  Log.Add(LogTypes.Error, -1, string.Format("Error in Dictionary listener when adding item to dictionary {0} ", ex.Message));

  67:              }

  68:          }

  69:      }

  70:  }

Configure the TraceListener

When you want to use the TraceListener you have to configure it in the web.config. Add the following section to your web.config file.

    <system.diagnostics>
        <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4">
            <listeners>
                <remove name="Default"/>
                <add name="AddDictionaryListener" type="SoetemanSoftware.Tools.AddUnknownDictionaryItemsListener,AddUnknownDictionaryItemsListener" />
            </listeners>
        </trace>
    </system.diagnostics>

Also modify the existing Trace element by adding the writeToDiagnosticsTrace="true". This will forward the ASP.NET trace messages to our AddUnknownDictionaryItemsListener. Simply set this attribute to false if you don't want the items to be added automatically.

<trace enabled="true" requestLimit="10" pageOutput="false" traceMode="SortByTime" localOnly="true" writeToDiagnosticsTrace="true" /> 

View the output

When you configured the trace listener and hit the page again the missing dictionary items are added to Umbraco.

Refresh the page again and you will see the following output

Sometimes you will encounter caching issues. When you want to avoid that use the umbdebugshowtrace=true querystring parameter which will prevent caching.

Download

You can download the DLL here. You can also dowload the source here.

Exactly 1 year ago I've downloaded Umbraco for the very first time and loving it ever since. One package that I've created in September last year was UmbImport. While that was a cool package I'm happy to announce that today I've released a new beta version of UmbImport. The most requested feature was the ability to import members. I'm happy to announce that this feature is implemented now. Below you find  a screencast that demo's the member import.

Import members using umbImport from Richard Soeteman on Vimeo.

More changes

While member import is the biggest thing, it's nice to know what's also changed since the last version. I will be blogging about each feature/change the next coming weeks.

• DataAdapters. The previous version of UmbImport only supported three datasources (Sql Server, CSV and XML). With the new version you can plugin your own datasource by creating a custom DataAdapter (in the free version this will be limited to 1).
• Events during import. Events are added that you can handle in your custom code that notify you when a record is imported.
• No more Dashboard control. UmbImport is moved from a dashboard control to a tree in the menu.
• Better install experience. With Umbraco 4 it's easier to create a package and modify config files etc via PackageActions. UmbImport uses default and Custom package actions to improve the install experience.

What's next?

Within a few weeks I hope to get V1 released and have proper documentation that describe the functionality. After that I will work on UmbImport PRO, which will contain a few extra features such as save wizard steps, scheduled imports, automatic field mapping, support for more than 1 custom DataAdapter and more... The PRO version of UmbImport will not be free(prices are not available yet).

As always I hope that you like the package which you can download here

Currently I'm working on an Umbraco V4 site and had an issue when rendering the meta tags.

The problem:

In my template I've added the keywords and description tag in the head to render the meta information for keywords and description.

<head runat="server">
<meta name="keywords" content="<umbraco:Item field='metaKeywords' recursive='true' runat='server'></umbraco:Item>" />
<meta name="description" content="<umbraco:Item field='metaDescription' recursive='true' runat='server'></umbraco:Item>" />
</head>

I've seen several examples that used the <Umbraco:Item> control with single quotes to set the properties so I thought this should work. However when the output was different then I would expect:

<head>
    <meta name="keywords" content="&amp;lt;umbraco:Item field='metaKeywords' recursive='true' runat='server'>&lt;/umbraco:Item>" />
    <meta name="description" content="&amp;lt;umbraco:Item field='metaDescription' recursive='true' runat='server'>&lt;/umbraco:Item>" />
</head>

The Cause:

When I took a detailed look on this issue I saw that the head tag in my template had a Runat="Server" attribute. When I removed this attribute the output was rendered fine. I'm using a few Ajax Controls on forms that throws an error when it can't find a Head tag with the Runat="Server" attribute, so simply removing it isn't the solution.

The solution,  Macro's to the rescue:

With a Macro and an XSLT file this issue can easily be solved and after thinking of it it's also a better solution because it's a better separation between HTML and ASP.Net code. To solve it you just create a Macro that excepts two parameters (keywords and description). Then create an XSLT file that outputs the values like this example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [ &lt;!ENTITY nbsp "&#x00A0;"> ]>
<xsl:stylesheet 
    version="1.0" 
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
    xmlns:msxml="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
    xmlns:umbraco.library="urn:umbraco.library"
    exclude-result-prefixes="msxml umbraco.library">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:param name="currentPage"/>
<xsl:variable name="keywords" select="/macro/keywords"/>
<xsl:variable name="description" select="/macro/description"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<meta name="keywords" content="{$keywords}" />
<meta name="description" content="{$description}" />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Then use the Macro in your template:

<umbraco:Macro keywords="[$metaKeywords]" description="[$metaDescription]" Alias="MetaTags" runat="server"></umbraco:Macro>

Now you have exact the same functionality and it will work in any situation. Because I'm using the $ sign before the fieldnames that are passed to the Umbraco. Umbraco will do a recursive search for the values of those properties, just like the recursive attribute does on the Umbraco:item tag.

Last week Warren Buckley asked for a URL Rewrite Action to use in his awesome next version of the  Umbraco Creative Website Starter site (if Warren release it make sure you download it, it's great!!). I was already thinking of creating some sort of packactions library so I started working on that a little bit sooner (and more in a hurry) than expected. The result is  a new Codeplex project called Package Actions Contrib that will hopefully be used by the community and I'm also hoping for a lot of contributors that will be part of this project.

Package Actions?

Package actions are great to include some custom functionality during the install of your package, just by implementing the IPackageAction interface and the use of Package XML in the package creator. This PDF describes all default package actions that are included in the V4 release of umbraco and it also describes how to use them.

AddUrlRewriteRule Action

Currently only one package action is included in the project. That is the AddUrlRewriteRule Action. With the AddUrlRewriteRule  you can add a new rewrite rule to the UrlRewriting.config file. The xml snippet below descibes the xml for adding the UrlRewrite rule to the config file. The action element is the normal element that you must include for each package action. The Alias is the alias that is used in the AddUrlRewriteRule class. The undo option is implemented but will not work because of this bug I recently found. And the add element is what you normally will add manually in the UrlRewriting.config file.

<Action runat="install" undo="true" alias="AddUrlRewriteRule">
    <add name="CWS_emaiAFriendID" 
    virtualUrl="^~/email-a-friend/(.[0-9]*).aspx" 
    rewriteUrlParameter="ExcludeFromClientQueryString" 
    destinationUrl="~/email-a-friend.aspx?nodeID=$1" 
    ignoreCase="true" />
</Action>

What's next

The next thing that will be added to the project is not a new action but it will be a tool where you can test your package action and package action xml without actually having to install a package. Instead you can upload the dll and enter the xml and press the testbutton to validate that the action installed or uninstalled correctly or what errors did occur. Also I like to have some documentation in the way that the normal package actions are described.

Contribute to the project

I think this project can only be a success with help from the community. So if you have some really cool custom package action now that could be useful to share please apply a patch on Codeplex or contact me by mail, also if you just have a great idea that could be included in the project.

Click here to visit the Codeplex project site. Hope to see some really nice package actions included in the contrib.

Yesterday I gave a demo about events in Umbraco V4. I did this by describing a few "Business problems" that could be solved using events. A few facts about events in Umbraco V4:

• You find events on every Component in Umbraco.
• To uses events, you need references to the businesslogic, cms and interfaces assemlies.
• To use events, you have to create a class that uses umbraco.BusinessLogic.ApplicationBase as the base class.  In the constructor you can wire up the event handler. These classes will be automaticly picked up when you put the file in the App_Code folder of Umbraco or put the compiled DLL in the bin folder of Umbraco. I prefer the last one.
• Most of the event args derive from CancelEventArgs, so we can cancel the operation.
• Because an event executes in the background you should always document that you're using events and make sure you will write a logmessage when you're event handler gets executed.

For my demo's, I've used an Umbraco V4 installation with the Creative Website Wizard installed.

Demo 1 Auto Expire news

In the first demo.I've showed how the document.BeforePublish can be used to check if  a news item is allready expired, if so cancel the publish event, otherwise check if the expire date is set and if not, set the expire date to 14 days from now.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:  using System.Text;

   4:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   5:  using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web;

   6:   

   7:  namespace AutoExpire

   8:  {

   9:      /// <summary>

  10:      /// 

  11:      /// </summary>

  12:      public class Expire :ApplicationBase

  13:      {

  14:          /// <summary>

  15:          /// Constructor used to wire up the event

  16:          /// </summary>

  17:          public Expire()

  18:          {

  19:              Document.BeforePublish += new Document.PublishEventHandler(Document_BeforePublish);

  20:          }

  21:   

  22:          /// <summary>

  23:          /// Check if the news item is expired, or check if we need to set the expire date

  24:          /// </summary>

  25:          void Document_BeforePublish(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.PublishEventArgs e)

  26:          {

  27:              //Always LOG

  28:              Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Event raised");

  29:              //Check if the doctype is news

  30:              if (sender.ContentType.Alias == "News")

  31:              {

  32:                  //Check if the expiredate is filled and the value is not allready expired

  33:                  if (sender.ExpireDate != DateTime.MinValue && sender.ExpireDate < DateTime.Now)

  34:                  {

  35:                      //Item is expired, cancel the publish

  36:                      e.Cancel = true;

  37:                  }

  38:                  else

  39:                  {

  40:                      //Date is not set set it now and save the doc. Probably better to to this in the before save event

  41:                      //since this is a demo it's allowed to do it here

  42:                      sender.ExpireDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(14);

  43:                      sender.Save();

  44:   

  45:                  }

  46:              }

  47:          }

  48:      }

  49:  }

During this demo someone asked if it's possible to show a custom message in the speechbubble event when an event is canceled. This is not possible (tested it this morning), I've created an item on CodePlex.

Demo 2 Auto archive news

In this Demo I've created some functionality to automaticly move a news item to the archive folder when a content manager sets the archive boolean to true. First an archive boolean must be added to the news document and a new Archive folder must be created where we can store the archived News items in.

   1:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   2:  using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web;

   3:   

   4:  namespace AutoMoveToArchive

   5:  {

   6:      /// <summary>

   7:      /// Auto move demo

   8:      /// </summary>

   9:      public class AutoMoveToArchive : ApplicationBase

  10:      {

  11:          /// <summary>

  12:          /// Wire up the event handler

  13:          /// </summary>

  14:          public AutoMoveToArchive()

  15:          {

  16:              Document.BeforeSave += new Document.SaveEventHandler(Document_BeforeSave);

  17:          }

  18:   

  19:          /// <summary>

  20:          /// Before a documents get saved we wil check if the archived proerty is.

  21:          /// When it's set move it to the archive folder.

  22:          /// Again it;s demo code, normally you should also check if it's not allready IN the archived foder 

  23:          /// </summary>

  24:          void Document_BeforeSave(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.SaveEventArgs e)

  25:          {

  26:              // Set Arrchive folder id, no excuse to use hard coded values in Umbraco 

  27:              int archiveId = 1123; 

  28:              //Log that we are doing something

  29:              Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Document After save Raised");

  30:   

  31:              //Check if the item is news and must be archived

  32:              if (sender.ContentType.Alias == "News" && sender.getProperty("archived").Value.Equals(1))

  33:              {

  34:                  //Yes, move to archive

  35:                  sender.Move(archiveId);

  36:   

  37:                  //Unpublish from current Node

  38:                  umbraco.library.UnPublishSingleNode(sender.Id);

  39:                  sender.UnPublish();

  40:                  //Publish will get called if the user selected Save and publish

  41:              }

  42:          }

  43:      }

  44:  }

Demo 3 Add Unpublish menu Item to the Context menu

In this demo I've showed that we can use events to modify the context menu. I'm missing a unpublish item  in the context menu. This example is a little bit harder because we we need to create a menu item also. A menu item can be created to create a class that derives from the IAction interface. I will leave the explanation of this interface for a future blogpost.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   3:  using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

   4:  using umbraco.interfaces;

   5:   

   6:  namespace UnpublishAction

   7:  {

   8:      /// <summary>

   9:      /// Add unpublish to the menu item

  10:      /// </summary>

  11:      public class AddUnpublishActionEvent :ApplicationBase

  12:      {

  13:          public AddUnpublishActionEvent()

  14:          {

  15:              BaseContentTree.BeforeNodeRender += new BaseTree.BeforeNodeRenderEventHandler(BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender);

  16:          }

  17:   

  18:          /// <summary>

  19:          /// Before a menu item gets rendered  we will add the unpublish action if the document is published

  20:          /// </summary>

  21:          private void BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender(ref XmlTree sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)

  22:          {

  23:              ///Only unpublish when published

  24:              if (node.Menu!= null && !node.NotPublished.GetValueOrDefault(true))

  25:              {

  26:                  //Find the publish action and add 1 for the index, so the position of the ubpublish  is direct after the publish menu item

  27:                  int index = node.Menu.FindIndex(delegate(IAction a) { return a.Alias == "publish"; })+1;

  28:   

  29:                  //Insert unpublish action

  30:                  node.Menu.Insert(index, UnpublishAction.Instance);

  31:              }

  32:          }

  33:      }

  34:  }

Download the complete solution for this demo here.

Demo 4 Invisible for Writer Usertype

In the last demo I've showed how to use the AfterNodeRender event to make protected nodes invisble for the Writer UserType

   1:  using System;

   2:  using umbraco.BusinessLogic;

   3:  using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

   4:   

   5:  namespace OnlyForAdmins

   6:  {

   7:      /// <summary>

   8:      /// Makes a document invisible for writers

   9:      /// </summary>

  10:      public class MenuIsNotForWriters : ApplicationBase

  11:      {

  12:          /// <summary>

  13:          /// Wire up the event handler

  14:          /// </summary>

  15:          public MenuIsNotForWriters()

  16:          {

  17:              BaseContentTree.AfterNodeRender += new BaseTree.AfterNodeRenderEventHandler(BaseContentTree_AfterNodeRender);

  18:          }

  19:   

  20:          /// <summary>

  21:          /// Removes node from menu tree if page is protected and the user is a writer

  22:          /// </summary>

  23:          void BaseContentTree_AfterNodeRender(ref XmlTree sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)

  24:          {

  25:              //check if page is protecetd and the usertype is writer

  26:              if (node.IsProtected.GetValueOrDefault(false) && umbraco.helper.GetCurrentUmbracoUser().UserType.Alias == "writer")

  27:              {

  28:                  //Writers cannot see protected pages

  29:                  sender.Remove(node);

  30:              }

  31:          }

  32:      }

  33:  }

Overview of all Events

One of the things I like most about Umbraco is that you can extend it in a way that your custom functionality has exactly the same behaviour as the standard Umbraco functionality. The biggest compliment you can get from a user is when they say "I found a bug in Umbraco" while it's your own control (or love the way Umbraco works when it's your own control)..  One of the things to achieve that is to use the same mechanism to show messages to the user as Umbraco does. In this post we create a simple user control where the user can type a message and we will show that message using the Umbraco Speech bubble mechanism as shown in the image below.

To build this we need to create a standard WebUserControl called SpeechBubble.ascx. In the ascx file we add the following code that creates the UI and hooks up an Event Handler for the submit button.

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="SpeechBubble.ascx.cs" Inherits="SpeechBubble" %>
Message:<asp:TextBox ID="MessageTextBox" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <asp:Button ID="SpeechButton" runat="server" onclick="SpeechButton_Click" Text="Submit" />

In the Code Behind file we will add the following code:

   1:  using System;

   2:  using umbraco.BasePages;

   3:   

   4:  public partial class SpeechBubble : System.Web.UI.UserControl

   5:  {

   6:      protected void SpeechButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

   7:      {

   8:          if (Page is BasePage)

   9:          {

  10:              //Okay we are in Umbraco

  11:              ((BasePage)Page).speechBubble(BasePage.speechBubbleIcon.info, "Message", MessageTextBox.Text);

  12:          }

  13:      }

  14:  }

We will run this code as an Dashboard Control which runs in the Umbraco context. Therefore we can cast the Page Type to a the Umbraco BasePage type and then use the speechBubble method which displays the message. If you want to play with this yourself, you can download the usercontrol here. Add the files in this zip file to the UserControl folder of Umbraco  and Modifiy the Dashboard.Config file which you can find in the Config folder:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<dashBoard>
<section>
    <areas>
        <area>developer</area>
    </areas>

    <tab caption="SpeechBubble">
        <control>/usercontrols/SpeechBubble.ascx</control>
    </tab>
</section>
</dashBoard>

Then when you login to Umbraco and go to the developer section you can send messages to yourself. Have fun.

Content Maintenance Dashboard is a simple package to bulk publish, unpublish and delete content items based on name,state and document type. When you install it and go to the developer section of Umbraco you can see the search screen like the image below. From the search results screen you can perform actions on a single Item or you can choose to perform the same action on all the items in the search result.

The package is using sql to search for the documents. I'm using the new datalayer so it should be working on any type of database that is supported by Umbraco, however I only tested the package on SQL Server. I have tested this package also on the Umbraco RC3 release(this is probably the first package that is compiled against the RC3 Binaries). You can download the package here, if you want the complete source code you can download it here.

Voor de echte Umbracoholics in de Benelux organiseert de Umbraco gebruikersgroep Benelux op zaterdag 21 februari haar tweede gebruikersbijeenkomst in Amsterdam. Het belooft weer een zeer informatieve dag te worden waar de nadruk uiteraard zal liggen op Umbraco V4, waarvan de tweede release candidate inmiddels uit is. In een informele sfeer zullen onder andere de volgende  onderwerpen behandeld worden.

• Umbraco een showcase. 
• Umbraco V4, een overzicht
• Canvas (voorheen Live Editing)
• DataLayer.
• Event model.
• Uitbreiden van Umbraco.

Uiteraard bestaat er ook de mogelijkheid je eigen implementaties, of ontwikkelde packages te tonen.

De gebruikersdag wordt gehouden bij Mirabeau in Amsterdam. Mirabeau is als full service internet bureau betrokken bij enkele grotere Umbraco implementaties, waarvan er één als showcase gepresenteerd zal worden.  Klik hier voor adres informatie en een routebeschrijving.

We zullen beginnen om 9:30 en eindigen rond 16:00. De gebruikersdag is gratis, het enige dat we vragen is je even in te schrijven via dit formulier. Doe dit snel, het aantal plaatsen is beperkt.

Tot zaterdag 21 februari.  

Last September I've created a package called UmbImport which is capable of importing content  from various datasources into Umbraco. For a demo of this package please checkout the video below.

UmbImport from Richard Soeteman on Vimeo.

The package was based on Beta1 of Umbraco 4 and threw errors when installing on Umbraco 4 RC.  I've fixed these bugs and created a new package. Currently I'm also working on a new version that is capable of importing members and I will add support for plugging in your own datasource, so you can import data from any datasource you like.

Download umbImport here