EPiServer CMS 5 certification

I have just passed the EPiServer CMS 5 certification! Together with one of my colleagues we were the first in Gothenburg to do the new certification test for CMS 5(at Cornerstone anyway). My colleague, Andreas Hansson, also passed the test. Congratulations!

Sorting a pagecollection by property

I had some problems today getting a PageCollection sorted by the “StartPublish”-property. After some digging, I found out that the page property-names should be prefixed by “Page”. So instead of sorting by “StartPublish” I should’ve sorted by “PageStartPublish” all along.

FilterPropertySort sorter = new FilterPropertySort("PageStartPublish", FilterSortDirection.Descending);
pagesCollection.Sort(sorter);

How to create a custom property in CMS 5

After som searching i found this EPiServer forum thread that show how to create a custom property in CMS 5. Not rocket sience, but I like to have one place to find code samples that will speed up my work. With this new blog I have just such a place

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using EPiServer;
using EPiServer.Core;
using EPiServer.DataAbstraction;
using EPiServer.PlugIn;
using EPiServer.Web.PropertyControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;namespace EPiServerDemo.PropertyTypes
{
  /// <summary>
  /// Custom PropertyData implementation
  /// </summary>
  [Serializable]
  [PageDefinitionTypePlugIn(DisplayName="My demo dropdown")]
  public class MyDropDownCore : EPiServer.Core.PropertyString
  {
  public override IPropertyControl CreatePropertyControl()
  {
  return new MyDropDownPropType();
  }
  }
public class MyDropDownPropType : EPiServer.Web.PropertyControls.PropertySelectControlBase
  {
  protected override void SetupEditControls()
  {
  base.SetupEditControls();DropDownList inputControl = this.EditControl;
  inputControl.Items.Add("Red");
  inputControl.Items.Add("Blue");
  inputControl.Items.Add("Green");

inputControl.SelectedValue = this.PropertyData.Value as string;
  }
  }
}

Getting your applications configuration

In .Net 3.0 you use the ConfigurationManager class, found in the System.Configuration namespace, to get a hold of your applications configuration. You need to make a reference to the System.Configuration.dll

To get your AppSettings, use the following line of code:

string MyString = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["keyname"].ToString();

To get you connection strings, use:

string connString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["connstr"].ConnectionString;

and add one node in web.config:

<connectionStrings>
<add name="connstr" connectionString=""/>
</connectionStrings>

Problem with additional query parameters and friendly url rewriter

Found out today that after a few hours of searching that there is a bug in the version (CMS 5) of EPiServer we use in one of our projects. When using additional querystring parameters one should turn of the caching of EPiServerFriendlyUrlRewriteProvider, with this row in web.config:

<add name="EPiServerFriendlyUrlRewriteProvider" description="EPiServer standard Friendly URL rewriter" type="EPiServer.Web.FriendlyUrlRewriteProvider,EPiServer" friendlyUrlCacheAbsoluteExpiration="0:0:0" />

This bug has been fixed in CMS 5 SP1, so it might be a good idea to upgrade