Richard's Blog

Blog has moved!

richdias — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:10:00 +0000

I have now moved my blog to http://www.cmssource.co.uk/blog

Sitecore and Telligent Community Integration

richdias — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:01:56 +0000

You may have read the following article:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/sitecore-and-telligent-integrate-for-better-online-engagement-005991.php

This claims that Sitecore and Telligent have integrated to make a convenient solution combining the power of a social networking/collaboration platform with the flexibility of a CMS system.

There is a fairly complicated white-paper that has been published by Sitecore which is split into two parts:

Security Integration
Content management integration

This solution is not as straight forward as it sounds and it is very poorly supported . . . . I strongly suggest that you do not waste your time heading down this path if you can avoid it. It provides a way for you to use community functionality within a Sitecore site (not the other way around . . . in case you were thinking about pulling Sitecore content into a community site). The solution is out dated and will not work with the latest versions of Sitecore.

We needed to Drive a Community server site and pull Content + Media out of Sitecore which will be used within Telligent community server via Widgets. We also embedded content from Sitecore directly into some of the community theme aspx files. The Community server web site also needed the ability to upload media items directly into Sitecore.

I found that the best method to pull out content from Sitecore into another web application is via a Web Service or potentially a REST service which will run within the Sitecore web application. This will give you the access required to Update/Create Sitecore content via a separate web application.

Setting up a Sitecore project works with both versions 5.3 and 6

richdias — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:31:29 +0000

Sitecore(SC) has a decent article on how to set up a Sitecore project on Visual Studio. This is a pretty good start but it does not quite meet our company’s requirements.

In this blog post I will attempt to tell you exactly how a structure a project assuming that you have the following requirements for your SC environment:

You need to have multiple websites running on one instance of SC and you want each website to have its own Visual Studio project.
You are not using a virtual folder per website.
You want to manage multiple Class Library/Child projects within each website project.
You want to keep the Renderings, Sub-layouts, Layouts, Associated files (css, js etc) and DLL’s of each website independent.

Our company has worked with multiple projects in Sitecore v5.3 and we have also Started a new project using Sitecore v6 (Visual Studio 2005 and 2008). I can safely say that we have come up with a tried and proven project structure that I can recommend that everyone can and should use. Please follow the SC developer cookbook if you are only going to ever have one website running on your instance of SC.

There is a fair bit to write on this entry and I will be slowly updating it, if anyone is in desperate need to this information right now then please leave a comment and I will try to speed things up!

HTML File Structure

It is always good to have a well structured website. Our team deals with the integration of HTML front end with SC. For this reason we usually get out HTML, CSS and JS delivered to us from a 3′rd party vendor. We get them to deliver the HTML to us in the following structure so that it fits snugly in with our intended .NET project structure:

Our website will be called “destinations“. Our main HTML files are on the highest level and we have folder named ‘destinations’ which contains all the css, images, JS etc. (the HTML will reference these files like this )

Obviously the HTML is just your reference, we will be splitting up all the HTML into Layouts, Sublayouts and Renderings. Only the ‘destinations’ folder and its contents will actually be part of our Visual Studio project.

Had a Discussion with Elliot who posted comment on this topic. I have pasted the discussion we have had below (read from bottom up):

HI Eliot,

Sounds like a good approach, we did think of doing it the way you did but we decided not to go ahead with is simply because the Cookbook suggests that all websites are created and run via the website folder.

Even when you do my method, you should only be having the newly created web app in your VS project. You should not need to import any sitecore objects (it should effectively have been the same as your independent virtual directory arrangement). I.e. as mentioned, each website does have its own web.app even tho they have all been moved into the sitecore/websites folder.

I am assuming sitecore’s web.config will be the failover web.config is your local web.app does not contain any web.config entries that have been tweaked for that site?

Are your URL’s looking consistent when viewing a web page in preview mode now that you have created the Virtual Folders?
I can’t really think of any potential issues with your configuration at the moment and if you do manage to avoid any problems this may well be the best soloution structure yet.

Keep me informed.
Thanks,
Richard

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Elliot Ritchie wrote:
Hi Richard

After experimenting with a ton of different configurations I think I’ve found the ideal way to integrate Sitecore with the current processes and project structures I’m working with right now; you’re directions definately provided a leap in the right direction!

Essentially,

Each website sits within its own web application that contains all the necessary css, images, renderings and layouts etc for the specific website.
The web applications then reference the Sitecore assemblies from a single predetermined Sitecore installation directory (this also allows for a much more efficient use of source control systems as it means each version controlled website doesn’t have to also include 300mb+ worth of Sitecore modules).
The web applications’ Web.config contain the necessary Sitecore configuation sections, tweaked for the specific website.
In IIS each web application is setup as its own website, with a virtual directory setup in each to provide the reference to the ‘/sitecore/’ directory, again this virtual directory points to the same predetermined Sitecore installation directory as before.

If you can see any holes in this setup please let me know, or any thoughts in general, but so far everything is running great!

Many Thanks

Elliot

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:15:07 +0530
Subject: Sitecore Project structure
From: Me
To: Elliot

Hi Elliot,

I can’t really update my Blog at the moment because I am on holiday ( I will be working purely off memory). I have been pretty lazy with that I must admit.
Will try to outline the steps here (I will assume your project is called destinations following from my HTML structure blog post:

You will need to follow the Sitecore developer cook book and create a project as described there (name the project DestinationsApp for consistency) within the sitecore/websites folder.
Given that you will be working with multiple projects (websites) then you will need to have more than one ‘properties’ folder (one is needed for each project solution) so you will need to rename the Properties folder to something like DestinationsProperties.Once you have done this you will need to edit the DestinationsApp project (.csj I think) file with a text editor and replace all instances of the ‘properties’ folder name to match your new ‘DestinationsProperties’ folder name. Close this file and you are ready to open the project – go ahead and add a reference to Sitecore.Kernal.dll and dont forget to set copyLocal to false.
Now that you have a basic Web App project there you can start adding the extra sections to this project. Create a folder within sitecore/website named ‘destinations’. Include this newly created folder in your DestinationsApp project because this will contain all the misc web files. Copy all the files from your HTML/destinations folder into the sitecore/website/destinations folder.
Within the sitecore/websites/layouts folder create a folder called ‘destinations’. Include this folder in the DestinationsApp project. All your layouts and sublayouts for the destinations website should be created here within the sitecore/websites/layouts/destinations folder. You can reference your css files and image files (that will be in the folder created at step 3) from all layouts and renderings by refering to the src/link like this:
Within the sitecore/websites/xsl folder create a folder called ‘destinations’. Include this folder in the DestinationsApp project. All your renderings for the destinations website should be created here within the sitecore/websites/xsl/destinations folder.
Now you should be ready to go with the creation of a basic website. I suggest that in your Content tree you start off your content within sitecore/content/destinations/home where Home will be your home page. When you have a second website to go in your sitecore instance then that can be located within sitecore/content/secondwebsite/home in the content tree. You will ofcourse need to change the web.config section to add each website.
We often have accompanying DLL class libraries (e.d. a DestinationsLogic class library project) and also a Database project when integrating 3′rd party DB’s with your sitecore website. I highly reccomend that you create and store these projects outside of your ‘sitecore/website’ folder because the goal is to keep the sitecore/website folder a clutter-free as possible. Create a filder within the C drive called c:/DestinationsProjects and then create two seperate folders in here for DestinationsLogic and DestinationsDB. Add your extra projects in here and by all means create these projects by ‘adding new project’ to your DestinationsApp project solution. This way all your projects will be logically in the same Visual Studio solution but Physically seperate. Add a Reference to each of these projects in your DestinationsApp project (and leave copyLocal as true) so that each time you compile your solution a DestinationsLogic.dll will be created in the sitecore/website/bin folder.
When you have this structure set up, you can easily add more websites to your sitecore instance by following steps 1 to 8 for each new websites and just replacing the word ‘Destinations’ with the name of your new website and they will all co-exsist without problems and you will end up with a highly maintainable, clutter-free project/site structure.

Hope this helps,
Richard

ASP.NET service faulting error Sitecore 6 workaround

richdias — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:57:21 +0000

We have sitecore 6 environments working on Virtual Machines (VM’s). Sitecore 6 seems to cause an ASP error at seemingly random intervals leading to a total loss of service 9only on VM’s. Event Viewer will show you the following error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: (100)
Event ID: 1000
Date:  8/8/2008
Time:  4:09:35 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: SCTEST
Description:
Faulting application w3wp.exe, version 6.0.3790.3959, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x709a2075.

Sitecore have provided a work-around for this. Set the following web.config entry to ‘false’ as show below:

Indicates if performance counters are enabled.
Default value: true
–>

We have made this change and it seems to get rid of the issue. Seems like Sitecores backend performance monitoring may be using some .NET 3.5 functionality that causes this error (this is just a guess).

See the SC forum for more details:

http://sdn5.sitecore.net/forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=11838#11838

How to destroy a cookie C#.NET

richdias — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:09:43 +0000

Basically have to set its expire date to the past! (the cookies we created for our site lasted a day so -1d was enough for this example)

public void DestroyCookie(string cookieName)
    {
        if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[cookieName] != null)
        {
            HttpCookie myCookie = new HttpCookie(cookieName);
            myCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1d);
            HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(myCookie);
        }
    }

Use your own Authentication

richdias — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:05:01 +0000

I didnt want to use Forms Authentication once and I decided to make my own password hashing just for the hell of it, here is a very simple implementation.
The goal was to save a user and the users password as a hash + a random salt string for increased security.
Also wanted to be able to generate a new password and have a hash + salt created for that new password I generated as can be seen from the following interface Crypto.cs.
Note: Yay downloaded a tool that actually Generated HTML from my code properly!! from here.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
 
namespace PassEncrypt
{
    interface Crypto
    {
        /// 
        ///  Gets the Hash key and Salt for a specific
        ///  password.  
        /// 
        /// 
        /// Will return a string with three elements       
        ///    1. Hash Key
        ///    2. Salt
        /// 
        string[] GenerateKeySalt( string plainTxtPass );
 
 
        /// 
        ///  Change the password.
        ///  
        /// 
        /// 
        /// Will return a string with three elements
        ///    1. New Password
        ///    2. Hash Key
        ///    3. Salt
        /// 
        string[] GenerateNewPassword();
 
        string GetHashKey(string input);
 
    }
}

And now to implement this interface with the Encrypt.cs class (p.s. Man I am lowing this new HTML generation from Code tool):

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
 
namespace PassEncrypt
{
    public class Encrypt : Crypto
    {
 
        #region Generate the Hash key and salt for a given password
 
        /// 
        /// Returns a salt value and a hash key to be stored
        /// in the database for the given user.
        /// 
        /// 
        /// 
        public string[] GenerateKeySalt(string plainTxtPass)
        {
            string[] s = new string[2];
 
            string salt = GenerateRandomSalt();
            string passAndSalt = plainTxtPass + salt;
            string hash = GetHashKey(passAndSalt);
 
            s[0] = hash;
            s[1] = salt;
            return s;
        }
 
        #endregion
 
        #region Generate a new password
 
        /// 
        /// Generates a new random password and returns a string array with:
        ///    1. new password
        ///    2. hash key
        ///    3. salt value
        /// 
        /// 
        public string[] GenerateNewPassword()
        {
            string[] s = new string[3];
 
            RandomPassword randPassGenerator = new RandomPassword();
 
            string newPass = randPassGenerator.GetPassword();     
            string salt = GenerateRandomSalt();
            string passAndSalt = newPass + salt;
            string hash = GetHashKey(passAndSalt);
 
            s[0] = newPass;
            s[1] = hash;
            s[2] = salt;
 
            return s;
        }
 
        #endregion
 
        #region Generate random salt
 
        /// 
        /// Generates a cryptographically strong salt string
        /// 
        /// 
        public string GenerateRandomSalt()
        {
            RNGCryptoServiceProvider crypto = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();
            byte[] saltInBytes = new byte[5];
            crypto.GetBytes(saltInBytes);
 
            return Convert.ToBase64String(saltInBytes);
        }
 
        #endregion
 
        #region Get the hash key for a given string
 
        public string GetHashKey(string input)
        {           
            byte[] tmpSource;
            byte[] tmpHash;
 
            //Convert input to a Byte Array (needed for hash function)
            tmpSource = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(input);
 
            //Compute hash based on source data.
            tmpHash = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider().ComputeHash(tmpSource);
 
            return Convert.ToBase64String(tmpHash);
        }
 
        #endregion
 
    }
}

The following class (RandomPassword.cs) contains my Random password generator. You may want to modify it according to the type of password you would like to generate:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
 
namespace PassEncrypt
{
    class RandomPassword
    {
        private int RandomNumber(int min, int max)
        {
            Random random = new Random();
            return random.Next(min, max);
        }
 
 
        /// 
        /// Generates a random string with the given length
        /// 
        /// Size of the string
        /// If true, generate lowercase string
        /// Random string
        private string RandomString(int size, bool lowerCase)
        {
            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
            Random random = new Random();
            char ch;
            for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
            {
                ch = Convert.ToChar(Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(26 * random.NextDouble() + 65)));
                builder.Append(ch);
            }
            if (lowerCase)
                return builder.ToString().ToLower();
            return builder.ToString();
        }
 
 
        public string GetPassword()
        {
            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
            builder.Append(RandomString(4, true));
            builder.Append(RandomNumber(1000, 9999));          
            return builder.ToString();
        }
 
    }
 
}

Thats all there is to it. I just made this is a class library project names PassEncrypt.

Just reference PassEncrypt and:
For a new user send their password in and get an array containing the [hash,salt], store these somewhere and associate them with the username:

    #region Get Hashed password
    public bool GetHashPassword(string username, string password)
    {
        Encrypt crypt = new Encrypt();
        string user = username;
        string pwd = password;
        string salt = “”;
        salt = dataService.GetUserSalt(user);
 
            if (salt != “”)
            {
                string passHash = dataService.GetUserHash(user);
 
                string resultHash = crypt.GetHashKey(pwd + salt);
 
 
                if (passHash == resultHash)
                { //Password Correct
                    return true;
                }
                else
                {
                    return false;
                }
            }
            else
                return false;
    }
    #endregion

Sitecore – Store Multilist related content within local item on save

richdias — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:50:18 +0000

The Requirement

Our clients have ‘subject’ and ’function’ Metadata fields within their web page. They wanted to be able to content manage this subject and function list . They then wanted to be able to assign a subset of these function and subject keywords into each web page item (so all the subjects and functions are common to the whole site).

The Problem

The cleanest solution to this problem was to define a bunch of simple text items for each of the subjects and functions within specfic folder items. We would then create two multi lists in the Metadata base template (one for subject and one for function) and point them at these respective source directories.

Now think of the situation: We have 5 subjects and 3 functions on average per web page. In the background, we are going to have to pull out data from 8 related content items every time we load a given page. We did not want to do this so we devised a simple work-around that would let us retain the useability of the method discussed above but also ave all this related content available on the one item when it needs to be served up.

The Solution (I will be using a simple ‘Category’ multilist example as a demo here)

We added two hidden (not visible to author) text field within the Metadata base template to correspond with each multilist. These two text fields will contain the content (not the Id’s) of the ‘Description’ field of the referenced items seperating each with a ‘|’ delimeter as can be seen below.

The categories associate to a simple text field item which must have a field named ‘Description’ within it:

All the categories should lie within a common folder item so that we can point our multilist source at that folder:

In the template that holds the multilist, make sure that you create a text field with the name ‘chosen ‘ + . I.e. in our example, our multilist is named ‘Categories’, so our hidden text field will be called ‘Chosen Categories’

Now we create an OnSaving event which does the following:

1. Check if the item thats being saved contains any multilists

2. If 1 = true, then for each multilist named in the current item

3. Check if there is a field named ‘Chosen ‘ + (of the current multilist) from 2

4. If 3 = true, then clear the ‘Chosen ‘ + field of its content; retrieve all the items referenced by the current multilist; For each of these items check if a ‘Description’ field exists; if ‘Description’ exists and there is content within it, add this content to ‘Chosen ‘ +

I have pasted the code for the ItemOnSavingEvents.cs class here (sorry about the indentation, copy/paste into blog isnt the best):

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Data.Events;
using Sitecore.Data;
using System.Collections;

namespace SitecoreSCD1Labs
{
    public class ItemOnSavingEvents
    {
        public void OnItemSavingPopulateHidenFields(object sender, EventArgs args)
        {
            Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item = Sitecore.Events.Event.ExtractParameter(args, 0) as Sitecore.Data.Items.Item;

            Sitecore.Collections.FieldCollection fields = item.Fields;

            foreach( Sitecore.Data.Fields.Field field in fields ) {
                if (field.Type == “multilist”)
                {
                    Sitecore.Data.Fields.MultilistField mlf = (Sitecore.Data.Fields.MultilistField)field;
                    String fieldname = field.Name;

                    if( item.Fields["chosen " + fieldname] != null ) { //Hidden field for corresponding multilist exists
                        Sitecore.Data.Fields.Field hiddenField = item.Fields["chosen " + fieldname];
                        hiddenField.SetValue(“”, false);

                        //Populate the hidden field with the descriptions from the related items (pipe delimitered)
                        String[] relatedItemGuids = mlf.Items;

                        foreach (String guid in relatedItemGuids)
                        {
                            Sitecore.Data.Database currentDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase(“master”);
                            Sitecore.Data.Items.Item relatedItem = currentDB.Items.GetItem(guid);                            if (relatedItem != null)
                            {
                                if (relatedItem.Fields["description"] != null)
                                    if (hiddenField.ToString() == “”)
                                        hiddenField.SetValue(relatedItem.Fields["description"].ToString(), false);
                                    else
                                        hiddenField.SetValue(hiddenField.ToString() + “|” + relatedItem.Fields["description"].ToString(), false);                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
Add a web.config entry in the Item onsave event to run your code:

  Drawbacks of this solutionUnfortunately if the content author changes an existing subject or function then the current items will not automatically change to reflect the new update. The new change will only get reflected on existing items once those items get edited for any reason and re-saved (I have found that some edit needs to be made, i.e. even a smal re-sort of one of the metadata multilist fields, otherwise the item:onsave event does not fire even if save is clicked). In our case the user will most likely only add new subjects and functions and not change existing ones.

Sitecore – Custom Text Field

richdias — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:06:11 +0000

In this blog I will describe how to create a very simple Custom Text field in Sitecore. I have based this off the example of a custom checkbox field that can be found in the Sitecore website from here.

I have found that this example is far too complicated. I tried to create a Custom control by inheriting Sitecore.Web.UI.HtmlControls.Control but I could not get it working properly initially (I find the Custom check box control that Sitecore has used as an example is far too complicated) I was sent a better example by sitecore and I will make the same custom control by inheriting this class in the near future when I find the time. However, because of current time constraints I had to take an alternative approach.

The control I have made is inheriting Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentEditor.Text directly and then overriding the HandleMessage event.

I needed to create a Custom Text field which behaves the same way as Sitecore’s Text field but I needed some extra menu items. Basically I needed to allow my authors to add some extra text Macron characters e.g. Ā

Here is the Sitecore Field Type item I have created (this should be implemented following the Sitecore example) Base Template is Sitecore>Templates>System>Templates>Template Field Type:

This is the Macron menu item I will be using as an example:

This is the end result I am trying to achieve (A regular text box with extra drop down menu items in Authoring mode):

Here is the Code MacroText.cs. As you may notice only the Clear field and the actual macron menu functions are currently working:
Note: I also had to chuck a space where it says ‘& #256;’ between the & and the #256; because otherwise this blog seems to keep converting it to “Ā’ within the code!!

I have uploaded this code to another blog that actually retains the indentation here

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Data;
using System.Xml;
using System.Web.UI;

namespace Datacom.FieldTypeExtensions
{
class MacroText : Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentEditor.Text
{

#region Constructor
public MacroText()
{
this.Class = “scContentControl”;
base.Activation = true;
}
#endregion

#region Overrides

public override void HandleMessage(Sitecore.Web.UI.Sheer.Message message)
{

if (message["id"] == this.ID)
{
string messageText;
if ((messageText = message.Name) == null)
{
return;
}

switch (messageText)
{
case “macrotext:copy” :
break;
case “macrotext:paste”:
break;
case “macrotext:clearfield”:
this.Value = String.Empty;
break;
case “macrotext:capitalAMacro”:
this.Value = this.Value + “& #256;”;
break;
}
}

base.HandleMessage(message);

}
#endregion
}
}

Here is my Sitecore web.config entry (the name of my assembly is ‘Datacom.FieldTypeExtensions’, this can be edited via the properties of your .NET project as can be seen in next image below):

My project structure:

Hopefully someone finds this helpful!