Download List Questions

Hello Everyone,

I have made a Download List area for my products but I have some issues.

I have PDF's in two different document libraries that I want in this one list. Can that be accomplished?

So I need the Download List to call a PDF from a shared folder (in addition to grabbing the ones in this folder) because that one PDF will be used in multiple download lists and I don't want to copy the PDF twenty times to be put in each folder.

Should be possible, it's just not one of those "Intuitive" sitefinity things...it's more "Out-tuative"

See attached

You drill down to the "View" you're on, then set the filter expression.  So just filter by the title or something else unique to those guys, maybe by their ID directly.

Examples:
Visible = true AND Status = Live AND (Title.Contains("Slippery") OR Title.Equals("Developmental - PPT"))
Visible = true AND Status = Live AND Title.Contains("Slippery")


www.sitefinity.com/.../filter-expressions-for-content-items

This of course all becomes moot if they'd ever allow multiple selection in the UI instead of just single or shared taxon.

Thanks for the response.,
But how do I write the folder path for the Title.Contains.
I tested it and it would only pull the PDF from the folder I currently have selected but not from the Shared folder outside of this one. See the attached.
I need to pull a PDF from the Shared folder and put it in the Document List on the Gas Charrock and Gas Radiant pages along with the PDF that is in those respective folders.

Okay, so you might be looking at this wrong...the folders are just an organization of documents.  Sitefinity just sees a giant bucket of documents to filter on.

So if you know the Ids or titles (Ids are safer) of the 2 documents you need to show, just base your filter expression on those.

Sorry for the newbie questions but I have looked all around in my folders of PDFs and can't seem to find where each document has an ID labeled.

I see an ID number inside of the Document List popup but I would not think that is for the PDF that I want to use.

It would be fantastic if they showed the ID of the document somewhere in the backend UI even if just for admins...but I don't think it's there right now

You can just open firefox\firebug and inspect the JSON traffic in the console window (or in chromes debugger) to get the IDs.

...or again maybe just try by title if you need something quick.  I'm even sure the dataitem has an AlbumId property on it you can use to filter to specific albums as well (check the json).

Hi Steve, thanks for the help.
When inspecting the elements of the Download List, all I see is the content placeholder ID of the Download List. So if I have two PDFs in that list, they both have the same ID number. Seemed like a good thought but if I have not put the PDF in the list yet, I would not see the ID on the web page in firebug, right?

Here is the page to look at for the Download List and PDFs if you have time.
sf.apwwyott.com/.../hot-plates

What I will need is the "More Information and Pricing" PDF to be shared among dozens of Download lists thus I want that one PDF to be in one folder and pulled by dozens of other Lists so I dont have to copy that PDF dozens of times and put it in each Download Lists separate folder.

Okay I tested and found a good filterexpression to use where you can use just the UI

Example:
(ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("/medical-foundations/mf5-osteoarthritis-hart-2013") OR ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("procomp/form-for-students-to-evaluate-lfs")) And Status = Live

So "ItemDefaultUrl" is effectively the embedUrl minus the hostname.  So that means it CONTAINS the name of the album and subfolders which you can use to filter with....So get the embed url for a file, paste it into notepad and just trim off the host, source, and at the end the version\extension (if there).  So you're just left with the album, folders, filename

Back to your Filter Expression idea. I think that should work. I must be doing something wrong.

Here is my folder structure, not that it seems to mean anything for the Filter Expression.
I have a View Spec Sheet pdf in Folder A. I have a test123 pdf in Folder B.
In the Download List Editor, I have the "From Selected Library" as pointing to Folder A.
So my goal is to have my Download List to show: View Spec Sheet and test123 PDF's, but one pdf coming from one folder and the other pdf coming from a different folder.

I have tried these Filter Expressions with the options above:

Visible = true AND Status = Live
This is the default expression and it will display my View Spec Sheet pdf from Folder A only.

Visible = true AND Status = Live AND Tags.Contains("Charbroiler Manual")
and I get Error Parsing Template in the Download List area.
My pdf file is called test123 and has a tag of Charbroiler Manual.

Visible = true AND Status = Live AND Title.Contains("test123")
and I get no PDFs shown in the Download list.

Visible = true AND Status = Live AND Title.Equals("test123 - PDF")
and I get no PDFs shown in the Download list.

It seems like everytime I put an AND after Live, I get no PDFs listed.

Any and all help will be sorely appreciated.

Hi Steve,
I will try your last idea...I was in the process of writing when you posted it...so wish me luck.

Do what I showed you...find those 2 files in the backend, get their embed urls, and strip out what I showed you.

(ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("/ALBUMA/test123")
OR
ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("ALBUMB/view-spec-sheet"))
And Status = Live

...or something like that

Gotcha ;) ...it'll work

HEY STEVE!!!

That worked...after I fixed a few fat fingered mistakes on quotation marks!!
And I also had to change the "From Selected Library" from looking in Folder A to the parent of Folder A. Obviously below, I used other folder names but it Worked!!!

(ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("/shared/test123") OR ItemDefaultUrl.Contains("/gas-radiant/view-spec-sheet")) AND Status = Live

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But ouch...now I have to do this about 50 more times.

So this should be in MYWish List for Sitefinity to make it easier to accomplish???
Can I post that somewhere?

Yes, it's IRRITATING...what we do here is just drop on the single documentlink controls...annoying.

What you have to do is put in a ticket and ask for the PITS issue to vote on, and if it doesn't exist, have them make a new one...this should exist though.

What needs to happen:
- DocumentLink Widget gets depreciated (as it doesn't provide any real value...can't edit the template for example).  So like if you dropped a document list on the page, and a documentlink below it, they render TOTALLY differently, where you would assume the rendered markup would be similar...and it's a pain pain pain to get them somewhat close.
- Content Widgets (all of them) need the ability to search for and SELECT documents from anywhere.  Not just by albums\folders\categories.  So like right now if I go to a module builder widget and plop it on a page, pick a single item...I can't select any more.  I should not only be able to select more, but also tell the widget to render in MasterView still; right now that's not possible.  If I select the one item the stupid thing renders in single view with no ability to turn that off.  So once this is done then the DocumentLink widget is rendered obsolete because you can just pick single items.

...put in the ticket, posting here will do nothing

I will look and vote or post it in the PITS section. Thanks!!

I have another Download List question though:

The Download List displays exactly what the file name is in your folder.
I want the webpage link to say "View Manual" but I still want to keep the file name to say...Charbroiler XYZ.
I had to change the names of all the files to get the webpage to say View Manual and that is not right for file management in the back end.
Any thoughts on this?

PITS sucks you won't find it :)

PLEASE put in a ticket to request it

Maybe add a custom field to documents for like "LinkTitle", then in your template just use that if it exists, if it doesn't...use the Title