Multiple providers for news, generic content

Hi,

I don't know if it possible, but can we use multiple providers like in SF 3.7? So that I can create a provider for news, that has some extra custom fields, without touching the original news items?

Regards,
Daniel

Hello Daniel Plomp,

Yes, it's possible to register additional providers for content items, please take a look at the attached screenshot showing where you can set this in the backend for News. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to ask. I'll be glad to help.

Regards,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

Hi Boyan,

Thanks for the reply.
I remember I asked this question during the beta release of SF, but can't find it.

Was this option added later on?

What I want is that I can add this new provider. The only difference would be the Application name and I want to add some dynamic fields for this provider.
In the backend I should be able to choose for which provider I want to add e.g. news, or generic content.

Are we talking about the same here?

Thanks,

Hello Daniel Plomp,

Thank you for the clarification. Yes, I believe we are talking about the same thing here, please take a look at the screenshots I've attached to this reply showing my second data provider for News in the Backend setting, and the result in the Content->News section where I can select among the two providers. Please do not hesitate to let me know if the functionality you demand differs from what I've shown.

All the best,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

How would you go about setting a different connection string for the second provider? So if I wanted to get news items in a different sitefinity install, how would I go about creating another data provider that would look in that database instead of the local install?

Cheers,

Brian

Hi Brian Crosby,

If that's the case, I believe this forum post might come in handy as it deals exactly with sharing Sitefinity content among multiple sites by registering the connection string and DataProvider. Please take  a look at it and let us know if you need some additional information. We'll be glad to help you further.

Greetings,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

This works for adding news items using multiple providers, but what about displaying the news on the page?  When I drop a news control onto a page it doesn't give me a list of provider(s) to pull the news from.  I have found I can set the provider in the advanced settings but no way that I can see to pull news items from all providers?

Hello Webteam,

That's a tough one, currently our out of the box ContentView controls support displaying content from a single provider. What you can do, as a workaround, would be to place two widgets on your page and configure them to pull data from each of the two providers.

Greetings,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

I've found that when I remove the default OpenAccess provider, and replace it with two of my own (one is simply the default one, renamed, so that the tab displays a friendlier name like "CompanyNews" and "OtherNews", when I click on Content > News, Sitefinity throws an error saying that the OpenAccessDataProvider doesn't exist in the configuration.  I guess something in Sitefinity has the provider name hard coded, or another configuration refers to it.

Is there a way to hide or remove the default provider for news, so that I can control the labels on the News tab?

Regards,
Mike Sharp

Hi Mike,

That's a tough one. like you have properly pointed out we refer the default provider as OpenAccessDataProvider, and the name cannot be changed (actually whenever you change the name, the default provider will still persist its settings, an a new provider with the specified name will be created).

All the best,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

Where are the settings to select the provider? I'm not seeing anything that looks like the provider when I look at the settings on the list control, for example, when I drag it into a page.

[quote]Boyan Barnev said:Hello Webteam,

That's a tough one, currently our out of the box ContentView controls support displaying content from a single provider. What you can do, as a workaround, would be to place two widgets on your page and configure them to pull data from each of the two providers.

Greetings,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

Hi Elizabeth,

You could try to fill in the ProviderName property inside the Advanced Settings of a ContentView. In the screenshot (attached) I have highlighted this field when working with a NewsView.

Kind regards,
Daniel

I found that property and set the value (see attached), but I still don't see the lists from the other provider when I "Select lists". Any other suggestions?