EPiServer Link Collection Property

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Frederik Vig in ASP.NET, C#, Code Snippet, EPiServer

The EPiServer Link Collection Property allows you to add links to web pages, documents and e-mail addresses. For a nice overview see this post: EPiServer 5 R2 and Link Collection property

In this example I’m going to show you how to use the link collection property to get a page reference to EPiServer pages and retrieve some content from them. This could be used for a related content sidebar or something similar.

Start by creating a new link collection property in admin mode to an existing page type or a new one, name it RelatedContent. Then go to edit mode and add a few links to various pages.

Now we’ll start on the page template, open up your web form and add this markup.

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="rptRelatedContent" OnItemDataBound="rptRelatedContent_ItemDataBound">
    <HeaderTemplate>
	<ul id="relatedContent">
    </HeaderTemplate>
    <ItemTemplate>
	<li>
	    <h3><asp:HyperLink runat="server" ID="lnkHeading" /></h3>
	    <p><asp:Literal runat="server" ID="ltlText" /></p>
	</li>
    </ItemTemplate>
    <FooterTemplate>
	</ul>
    </FooterTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Then in your code-behind.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (IsValue("RelatedContent"))
    {
	// using EPiServer.SpecializedProperties;
	var relatedContent = (LinkItemCollection)CurrentPage["RelatedContent"];
 
	if (relatedContent != null)
	{
	    rptRelatedContent.DataSource = relatedContent;
	    rptRelatedContent.DataBind();
	}
    }
}
 
protected void rptRelatedContent_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item || e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
    {
	var linkItem = (LinkItem)e.Item.DataItem;
	var lnkHeading = (HyperLink)e.Item.FindControl("lnkHeading");
	var ltlText = (Literal)e.Item.FindControl("ltlText");
 
	if (linkItem != null && lnkHeading != null && ltlText != null)
	{
	    var url = new UrlBuilder(linkItem.Href);
 
	    // using EPiServer.Web;
	    bool isEPiServerPage = PermanentLinkMapStore.ToMapped(url);
 
	    if (isEPiServerPage)
	    {
		var page = DataFactory.Instance.GetPage(PermanentLinkUtility.GetPageReference(url));
 
		if (page != null)
		{
		    lnkHeading.Text = page["Heading"] as string ?? page.PageName;
		    lnkHeading.NavigateUrl = page.LinkURL;
 
		    ltlText.Text = GetText(page, 255);
		}
	    }
	}
    }
}

The GetText method I usually place in a static helper class. It is just to get 255 characters of text from the pages MainIntro property or if it is empty from the MainBody property:

public static string GetText(PageData page, int textLength)
{
    if (page == null)
    {
	return string.Empty;
    }
 
    var text = page["MainIntro"] as string;
 
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
    {
	text = page["MainBody"] as string;
    }
 
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
    {
	return string.Empty;
    }
 
    // using EPiServer.Core.Html;
    return TextIndexer.StripHtml(text, textLength);
}

You could also add it as an extension method:

// Simply add the this keyword in front of PageData
public static string GetText(this PageData page, int textLength)
{
...
}

Then you can call it like this instead:

ltlText.Text = page.GetText(255);

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