How to use Classifications > Categories widget?

Posted by Community Admin on 25-May-2011 00:00

I tried adding the guid from the database in the Taxonomy ID, but I cannot get it to display categories. I would like to display children of a specific category. Is this possible with the built in widget?

Posted by Community Admin on 25-May-2011 00:00

Hello Basem,

You can use RadTreeBinder control

<telerik:RadTreeView id="parentTaxonTreeView" runat="server"

ShowLineImages="false" Skin="Sitefinity" ExpandAnimation-Type="None" CollapseAnimation-Type="None" />

<sitefinity:RadTreeBinder

id="parentTaxonTreeViewBinder"

runat="server"

ServiceUrl="~/Sitefinity/Services/Taxonomies/HierarchicalTaxon.svc/"

ServiceChildItemsBaseUrl="~/Sitefinity/Services/Taxonomies/HierarchicalTaxon.svc/subtaxa/"

ServicePredecessorBaseUrl="~/Sitefinity/Services/Taxonomies/HierarchicalTaxon.svc/predecessor/"

TargetId="parentTaxonTreeView"

ParentDataKeyName="ParentTaxonId"

DataKeyNames="Id"

RootTaxonID="5e8512c3-a195-42ee-877e-8a3ebdfa948c"

DataMembers="Title"

BindOnLoad="true">

<Containers>

<sitefinity:BinderContainer ID="BinderContainer1" runat="server" RenderContainer="false">

<span> Title </span>

</sitefinity:BinderContainer>

</Containers>

</sitefinity:RadTreeBinder>

You can use the API to achieve this

            var TManager = TaxonomyManager.GetManager();
            var hTaxon = TManager.GetTaxon<HierarchicalTaxon>(new Guid("5e8512c3-a195-42ee-877e-8a3ebdfa948c"));
            var sTaxa = hTaxon.Subtaxa;

Basically you work with HierarchicalTaxon and collection of subtaxa.
The

Greetings,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

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Posted by Community Admin on 27-Nov-2011 00:00

Hello,

Is there any other way to get taxon by name/irl? ID is not really friendly approach.
Can Categories Widget used for this purpose?

Thanks,
Denis.

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Hello Denis,

Getting an item by Id is the best way that you can use. I am not sure what do you mean by friendly way, since we allow to taxons with the same name. Then getting the item by name is not an option if you have two or more taxons with the same name but different url.

You can create a static class with method that gets all taxons and returns List<Taxon> and after that loop the list by Name or another property.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

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Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Hi Ivan,

thanks for the prompt response.

I am not sure what do you mean by friendly way
I mean that in order to get taxon ID you have to browse database. That would be easier to get ID information from sitefinity backend someway.

I have another question. In this post we created custom categories widget. But we have out-of-box categories widget in sitefinity. Why we don't use this widget to achieve same thing? And how it works? It is probably simple question, but I never used categories widget before. I tried to drop this widget on my page and assign BaseUrl property. But it doesn't generate any output.

Thanks,
Denis.

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Hi Denis,

Get all items and then loop through them and get the item by name. You can use a simple LINQ query to do this. I think that the out of the box widget shows items as a list.

Regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Do you want to have your say in the Sitefinity development roadmap? Do you want to know when a feature you requested is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Is this what you are looking for? I hope it helps:

public static IEnumerable<T> GetTaxonItems<T>(ITaxon taxon)

// get the manager for the items, e.g. NewsManager

var manager = ManagerBase.GetMappedManager(typeof(T));

// get the base content database provider

var contentProvider = manager.Provider as ContentDataProviderBase;

// get a taxonomy property descriptor for this item type and taxon

TaxonomyPropertyDescriptor prop = TaxonomyManager.GetPropertyDescriptor(typeof(T), taxon);

int? totalCount = 0;

// use the GetItemsByTaxon() method to return IEnumerable of items.

var items = contentProvider.GetItemsByTaxon(taxon.Id,

prop.MetaField.IsSingleTaxon,

prop.Name,

typeof(T),

string.Empty, // filter

string.Empty, // order by

0, // skip

100, // take

ref totalCount);

return items as IEnumerable<T>;

Then you can use it like this:

var items = GetTaxonItems<NewsItem>(taxon);

var news = items

.Where(n => n.Status == ContentLifecycleStatus.Live)

.Select(n => new

Title = n.Title.Value,

Url = n.Urls.FirstOrDefault().Url

);

RadGrid1.DataSource = news;

RadGrid1.DataBind();

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Basem and Ivan,

thank you for responses! I'm clear now about getting taxones.
I already created cusom widget that works great.

But I still doesn't understand why out-of-box categories widget doesn't generate any output for me?
I drop this widget on my page and assign BaseUrl property. What do I do wrong?

Thanks!
Denis.

Posted by Community Admin on 28-Nov-2011 00:00

Ya it took me some time to grasp the built in category widget. I believe you need to put a news list widget (or events, blogs, etc) on the same page as the category widget to get it working.

For me though, I ended up starting from scratch like this:

public void BuildCategoryUL(string name)

//GET CATEGORY BY PARENT NAME

var taxa = this.TaxonomyManager.GetTaxa<HierarchicalTaxon>()

.Where(t => t.Parent.Name == name)

.OrderBy(t => t.Ordinal);

//CHECK IF CHILDREN CATEGORIES EXIST

if (taxa != null && taxa.Count() > 0)

//BUILD UL LIST OF CHILDREN CATEGORIES

if (this.Output.Length == 0 && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.CssClass))

this.Output.AppendFormat("<ul class=\"0\">", this.CssClass);

else

this.Output.AppendLine("<ul>");

foreach (var item in taxa)

this.Output.AppendLine("<li>");

//BUILD LINK FOR CATEGORY PAGE

string page = String.Empty;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Description))

//PAGE STORED IN DESCRIPTION FIELD IN OUR CASE

page = this.ResolveUrl(item.Description);

else

//RESOLVE CONTENT PAGE WITH CATEGORY FILTER CONTROL

page = this.ResolveUrl(this.ContentPage);

//BUILD CATGORY URL FORMAT

page += "/-in-Category/Categories" + item.FullUrl;

//RENDER TITLE AS LINK

this.Output.AppendFormat("<a href=\"0\" class=\"title\">1</a>", page, item.Title);

//RENDER DESCRIPTION IF APPLICABLE

if (this.DisplayDescription)

this.Output.AppendFormat("<p class=\"description\">0</p>", item.Description);

//RENDER CONTENT ITEMS IF APPLICABLE

if (this.DisplayContentItems)

var contents = GetItems(item)

.Cast<ProductItem>()

.OrderBy(p => p.Title.Value)

.Where(p => !p.GetValue<bool>("CategoryItem"))

.ToList();

if (contents.Count > 0)

this.Output.AppendLine("<ul>");

foreach (var content in contents)

this.Output.AppendLine("<li>");

//DETERMINE TITLE

string title = content.GetValue<string>("LabelName");

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(title))

//USE TITLE AS MENU NAME IF APPLICABLE

title = content.Title;

//RENDER TITLE AS LINK

this.Output.AppendFormat("<a href=\"0\" class=\"title\">1</a>", this.ResolveUrl(this.ContentPage + content.Urls[0].Url), title);

this.Output.AppendLine("</li>");

this.Output.AppendLine("</ul>");

//RECURSIVELY BUILD CHILDREN CATEGORIES

this.BuildCategoryUL(item.Name);

this.Output.AppendLine("</li>");

this.Output.AppendLine("</ul>");

public static IEnumerable GetItems(ITaxon taxon)

string itemTypeName = typeof(ProductItem).FullName;

Type itemType = TypeResolutionService.ResolveType(itemTypeName);

var manager = ManagerBase.GetMappedManager(itemType, "");

ContentDataProviderBase contentProvider = manager.Provider as ContentDataProviderBase;

TaxonomyPropertyDescriptor prop = TaxonomyManager.GetPropertyDescriptor(itemType, taxon);

int? totalCount = 0;

var filter = "Status = Master";

var items = contentProvider.GetItemsByTaxon(taxon.Id, prop.MetaField.IsSingleTaxon, prop.Name, itemType, filter, String.Empty, 0, 100,

ref totalCount);

return items;

If you wanted to, you can create an XML string instead of an HTML list, then load it up into a PanelBar.

Posted by Community Admin on 29-Nov-2011 00:00

Basem,

thank you for the good example!
This is looks like the best solution.

Denis.

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