Umbraco 7 load content media picker in custom section

Question

I've created a custom section in Umbraco 7 that references external urls, but have a requirement to extend it to use exactly the same functionality as the media picker from the 'Content' rich text editor. I don't need any other rich text functionality other than to load the media picker overlay from an icon, and select either an internal or external url.

I've tried to distil the umbraco source code, as well as trying various adaptations of online tutorials, but as yet I can't get the media picker to load.

I know that fundamentally I need:

Another angular controller to return the data from the content 'getall' method
An html section that contains the media picker overlay
A reference in the edit.html in my custom section to launch the overlay.

However, as yet I haven't been able to wire it all together, so any help much appreciated.

Adam Tarling · Accepted Answer

So, this is how I came up with the solution.....

The first win was that I discovered 2 excellent tutorial blog posts, upon the shoulders of which this solution stands, so much respect to the following code cats:

Tim Geyssons - Nibble postings: http://www.nibble.be/?p=440

Markus Johansson - Enkelmedia http://www.enkelmedia.se/blogg/2013/11/22/creating-custom-sections-in-umbraco-7-part-1.aspx

Create a model object to represent a keyphrase, which will be associated to a new, simple, ORM table. The ToString() method allows a friendly name to be output on the front-end.

 [TableName("Keyphrase")]
 public class Keyphrase
 {
    [PrimaryKeyColumn(AutoIncrement = true)]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Phrase { get; set; }
    public string Link { get; set; }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return Name;
    }
}

Create an Umbraco 'application' that will register the new custom section by implementing the IApplication interface. I've called mine 'Utilities' and associated it to the utilities icon.
```
[Application("Utilities", "Utilities", "icon-utilities", 8)]
public class UtilitiesApplication : IApplication { }
```

The decorator allows us to supply a name, alias, icon and sort-order of the new custom section.

Create an Umbraco tree web controller that will allow us to create the desired menu behaviour for our keyphrases, and display the keyphrase collection from our database keyphrase table.

[PluginController("Utilities")]
[Umbraco.Web.Trees.Tree("Utilities", "KeyphraseTree", "Keyphrase", iconClosed: "icon-doc", sortOrder: 1)]
public class KeyphraseTreeController : TreeController
{
    private KeyphraseApiController _keyphraseApiController;

    public KeyphraseTreeController()
    {
         _keyphraseApiController = new KeyphraseApiController();
    }

    protected override TreeNodeCollection GetTreeNodes(string id,                                                                FormDataCollection queryStrings)
    {
        var nodes = new TreeNodeCollection();
        var keyphrases = _keyphraseApiController.GetAll();

        if (id == Constants.System.Root.ToInvariantString())
        {
            foreach (var keyphrase in keyphrases)
            {
                var node = CreateTreeNode(
                keyphrase.Id.ToString(),
                "-1",
                queryStrings,
                keyphrase.ToString(),
                "icon-book-alt",
                false);

                nodes.Add(node);
            }
        }

        return nodes;
    }

    protected override MenuItemCollection GetMenuForNode(string id,                                                               FormDataCollection queryStrings)
    {
        var menu = new MenuItemCollection();

        if (id == Constants.System.Root.ToInvariantString())
        {
            // root actions
             menu.Items.Add(ui.Text("actions", ActionNew.Instance.Alias));
            menu.Items.Add(ui.Text("actions", ActionRefresh.Instance.Alias), true);
            return menu;
        }
        else
        {
            menu.Items.Add(ui.Text("actions", ActionDelete.Instance.Alias));
        }
        return menu;
    }
}

The class decorators and TreeController extension allow us to declare the web controller for our keyphrase tree, associate it to our Utilities custom section, as well as choose an icon and sort order.

We also declare an api controller (we'll get to that!), which will allow us access to our Keyphrase data object.

The GetTreeNodes method allows us to iterate the keyphrase data collection and return the resultant nodes to the view.

The GetMenuNode method allows us to create the menu options we require for our custom section. We state that if the node is the root (Utilities), then allow us to add child nodes and refresh the node collection. However, if we are lower in the node tree (Keyphrase) then we only want users to be able to delete the node (ie the user shouldn't be allowed to create another level of nodes deeper than Keyphrase)

Create an api controller for our Keyphrase CRUD requests

public class KeyphraseApiController : UmbracoAuthorizedJsonController
{
    public IEnumerable GetAll()
    {
        var query = new Sql().Select("*").From("keyphrase");
        return DatabaseContext.Database.Fetch(query);
    }

    public Keyphrase GetById(int id)
    {
        var query = new Sql().Select("*").From("keyphrase").Where(x => x.Id == id);
        return DatabaseContext.Database.Fetch(query).FirstOrDefault();
    }

    public Keyphrase PostSave(Keyphrase keyphrase)
    {
        if (keyphrase.Id > 0)
            DatabaseContext.Database.Update(keyphrase);
        else
            DatabaseContext.Database.Save(keyphrase);

        return keyphrase;
    }

    public int DeleteById(int id)
    {
        return DatabaseContext.Database.Delete(id);
    }
}

Create the custom section views with angular controllers, which is the current architectual style in Umbraco 7. It should be noted that Umbraco expects that your custom section components are put into the following structure App_Plugins//BackOffice/

We need a view to display and edit our keyphrase name, target phrase and url

    
            
                
                    
                        
                    

                    
                        
                            
                            
                        
                    
                

                
                    
                        
                            
                                
                            

                            
                                {{keyphrase.Link}}

This utilises umbraco and angular markup to display data input fields dynamically and associate our view to an angular controller that interacts with our data layer

    angular.module("umbraco").controller("Keyphrase.KeyphraseEditController",
    function ($scope, $routeParams, keyphraseResource, notificationsService, navigationService) {

        $scope.loaded = false;

        if ($routeParams.id == -1) {
            $scope.keyphrase = {};
            $scope.loaded = true;
        }
        else {
            //get a keyphrase id -> service
            keyphraseResource.getById($routeParams.id).then(function (response) {
            $scope.keyphrase = response.data;
            $scope.loaded = true;
        });
    }

    $scope.save = function (keyphrase) {
        keyphraseResource.save(keyphrase).then(function (response) {
            $scope.keyphrase = response.data;
            $scope.keyphraseForm.$dirty = false;
            navigationService.syncTree({ tree: 'KeyphraseTree', path: [-1, -1], forceReload: true });
            notificationsService.success("Success", keyphrase.Name + " has been saved");
        });
    };

});

Then we need html and corresponding angular controller for the keyphrase delete behaviour

    
        
            Are you sure you want to delete {{currentNode.name}} ?
        
        
            
                
                    Cancel
                    
                    
                        OK

Utilise Umbraco's linkpicker to allow a user to select an internal or external url. We need html markup to launch the LinkPicker
```
    
        
            
            Select
        
    
```

And an associated directive js file that launches the link picker and posts the selected url back to the html view

    angular.module("umbraco.directives")
        .directive('umbLinkPicker', function (dialogService, entityResource)         {
            return {
                restrict: 'E',
                replace: true,
                templateUrl: '/App_Plugins/Utilities/umb-link-picker.html',
                require: "ngModel",
                link: function (scope, element, attr, ctrl) {

                    ctrl.$render = function () {
                        var val = parseInt(ctrl.$viewValue);

                        if (!isNaN(val) && angular.isNumber(val) && val > 0) {

                            entityResource.getById(val, "Content").then(function (item) {
                                scope.node = item;
                            });
                        }
                };

                scope.openLinkPicker = function () {
                    dialogService.linkPicker({ callback: populateLink });
                }

                scope.removeLink = function () {
                    scope.node = undefined;
                    updateModel(0);
                }

                function populateLink(item) {
                    scope.node = item;
                    updateModel(item.url);

                }

                function updateModel(id) {
                    ctrl.$setViewValue(id);

                }
            }
        };
    });

There is one final js file that allows us to send data across the wire, with everyone's favourite http verbs GET, POST(handles put too here too) and DELETE

    angular.module("umbraco.resources")
        .factory("keyphraseResource", function ($http) {
            return {
                getById: function (id) {
                    return $http.get("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/GetById?id=" + id);
                },
                save: function (keyphrase) {
                    return $http.post("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/PostSave", angular.toJson(keyphrase));
                },
                deleteById: function (id) {
                    return $http.delete("BackOffice/Api/KeyphraseApi/DeleteById?id=" + id);
                }
            };
        });

In addition, we will need a package manifest to register our javascript behaviour

    {
        javascript: [
        '~/App_Plugins/Utilities/BackOffice/KeyphraseTree/edit.controller.js',
            '~/App_Plugins/Utilities/BackOffice/KeyphraseTree/delete.controller.js',
        '~/App_Plugins/Utilities/keyphrase.resource.js',
        '~/App_Plugins/Utilities/umbLinkPicker.directive.js'
        ]
    }

Implement tweaks to allow the CMS portion of the solution to work correctly. At this point we've almost got our custom section singing, but we just need to jump a couple more Umbraco hoops, namely a) add a keyphrase event class that creates our keyphrase db table if it doesn't exist (see point 8) b) fire up Umbraco and associate the new custom section to the target user (from the User menu) c) alter the placeholder text for the custom section by searching for it in umbraco-->config-->en.xml and swapping out the placeholder text for 'Utilities'
Intercept target content fields of target datatypes when content is saved or published The requirement I was given was to intercept the body content of a news article, so you'll need to create a document type in Umbraco that has, for example, a title field of type 'Textstring', and bodyContent field of type 'Richtext editor'.

You'll also want a, or many, keyphrase(s) to target, which should now be in a new Umbraco custom section, 'Utilities'

Here I've targeted the keyphrase 'technology news' to link to the bbc technology news site so that any time I write the phrase 'technology news' the href link will be inserted automatically. This is obviously quite a simple example, but would be quite powerful if a user needed to link to certain repetitive legal documents, for example tax, property, due dilligence, for example, which could be hosted either externally or within the CMS itself. The href link will open an external resource in a new tab, and internal resource in the same window (we'll get to that in Point 9)

So, the principle of what we're trying to achieve is to intercept the Umbraco save event for a document and manipulate our rich text to insert our link. This is done as follows: a) Establish a method (ContentServiceOnSaving) that will fire when a user clicks 'save', or 'publish and save'. b) Target our desired content field to find our keyphrases. c) Parse the target content html against our keyphrase collection to create our internal/external links.

NB: If you just want to get the custom section up and running, you only need the ApplicationStarted method to create the KeyPhrase table.

    public class KeyphraseEvents : ApplicationEventHandler
    {
        private KeyphraseApiController _keyphraseApiController;

        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, 
                                           ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        {
            _keyphraseApiController = new KeyphraseApiController();
            ContentService.Saving += ContentServiceOnSaving;
            var db = applicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database;

            if (!db.TableExist("keyphrase"))
            {
                db.CreateTable(false);
            }
        }

        private void ContentServiceOnSaving(IContentService sender, SaveEventArgs saveEventArgs)
        {
            var keyphrases = _keyphraseApiController.GetAll();
            var keyphraseContentParser = new KeyphraseContentParser();

            foreach (IContent content in saveEventArgs.SavedEntities)
            {
                if (content.ContentType.Alias.Equals("NewsArticle"))
                {
                    var blogContent = content.GetValue("bodyContent");
                    var parsedBodyText = keyphraseContentParser.ReplaceKeyphrasesWithLinks(blogContent, keyphrases);
                    content.SetValue("bodyContent", parsedBodyText);
                }
            }
        }
    }

The ContentServiceOnSaving method allows us to intercept any save event in Umbraco. Afterwhich we check our incoming content to see if it's of the type we're expecting - in this example 'NewsArticle' - and if it is, then target the 'bodyContent' section, parse this with our 'KeyphraseContentParser', and swap the current 'bodyContent' with the parsed 'bodyContent'.

Create a Keyphrase parser to swap keyphrases for internal/external links

public class KeyphraseContentParser
{
    public string ReplaceKeyphrasesWithLinks(string htmlContent,                                                        IEnumerable keyphrases)
    {
        var parsedHtmlStringBuilder = new StringBuilder(htmlContent);

        foreach (var keyphrase in keyphrases)
        {
            if (htmlContent.CaseContains(keyphrase.Phrase, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            {
                var index = 0;
                do
                {
                    index = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString()
                    .IndexOf(keyphrase.Phrase, index, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

                    if (index != -1)
                    {
                        var keyphraseSuffix = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString(index, keyphrase.Phrase.Length + 4);
                        var keyPhraseFromContent = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString(index, keyphrase.Phrase.Length);

                        var keyphraseTarget = "_blank";

                        if (keyphrase.Link.StartsWith("/"))
                        {
                            keyphraseTarget = "_self";
                        }

                        var keyphraseLinkReplacement = String.Format("{2}",
keyphrase.Link, keyphraseTarget, keyPhraseFromContent);

                        if (!keyphraseSuffix.Equals(String.Format("{0}", keyPhraseFromContent)))
                        {
                            parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Remove(index, keyPhraseFromContent.Length);
                            parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Insert(index, keyphraseLinkReplacement);
                            index += keyphraseLinkReplacement.Length;
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            var previousStartBracket = parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString().LastIndexOf("", index);

                          parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Remove(previousStartBracket, (nextEndBracket - (previousStartBracket - 2)));
                               parsedHtmlStringBuilder.Insert(previousStartBracket, keyphraseLinkReplacement);
                    index = previousStartBracket +         keyphraseLinkReplacement.Length;
                        }
                    }
                } while (index != -1);
            }
        }

        return parsedHtmlStringBuilder.ToString();
    }
}

It's probably easiest to step through the above code, but fundamentally the parser has to:

a) find and wrap all keyphrases, ignoring case, with a link to an internal CMS, or external web resource.

b) handle an already parsed html string to both leave links in place and not create nested links.

c) allow CMS keyphrase changes to be updated in the parsed html string.

The blog of this, as well as the github code can be found from the links in the previous post.

Umbraco 7 load content media picker in custom section

Answers (2)

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