Dynamically filtering content on hierarchical categories - Sitefinity - Front- & Back-End Development

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Posted by Community Admin on 26-Sep-2016 00:00

Our solution calls for a number of dynamic content items with a hierarchical category field containing any number of taxons.

The hierarchical structure is separated into n category groups. For example: Size Large, Medium, Small and Color Red Green Blue .

The UI allows a user to select any number of these to filter the content. eg. Large + Red + Green should return anything Large & Red or Large & Green. The selected taxons are returned to the server as a 2D array of Guids (the above selection would be [[Large], [Red, Green]]).

I have been able to filter by a single filter group, but when I try to add a second filter group no results are returned even though I have content that should fit the criteria. My code is:

[HttpPost]

[RelativeRoute("GetProducts")]

public JsonResult GetProducts(ProductListRequest request)

var products = GetProducts();

products = FilterProducts(products, request);

var response = new ProductListResponse(request.Page, ProductsPerPage);

response.AllProductsCount = products.Count();

if (request.Page >= 0)

products = products.Skip(request.Page * ProductsPerPage).Take(ProductsPerPage);

response.Products = products;

return Json(response);

public static IQueryable<DynamicContent> GetProducts()

DynamicModuleManager dynamicModuleManager = DynamicModuleManager.GetManager("OpenAccessProvider");

Type productType = TypeResolutionService.ResolveType("Telerik.Sitefinity.DynamicTypes.Model.MyModule.Product");

return dynamicModuleManager.GetDataItems(productType).Where(p => p.Status == ContentLifecycleStatus.Live);

public static IQueryable<DynamicContent> FilterProducts(IQueryable<DynamicContent> products, ProductListRequest request)

if (request.FilterList == null) return products;

foreach (Guid[] filterlist in request.FilterList.Where(x => x != null))

products = FilterByCategory(products, filterlist);

return products;

private static IQueryable<DynamicContent> FilterByCategory(IQueryable<DynamicContent> products, Guid[] categories)

if (categories.Any())

products = products.Where(p => p.GetValue<TrackedList<Guid>>("Category").Any(g => categories.Contains(g)));

return products;

Here is an example of a filter against 2 taxon groups which returns no results:

Extent<Telerik.Sitefinity.DynamicTypes.Model.MyModel.Product>().Where(re-p => (re-p.ApplicationName == OpenAccessProvider.ApplicationName)).Where(re-p => (Convert(Convert(Convert(Convert(Convert(Convert(Convert(re-p.Status))))))) == 2)).Where(re-p => re-p.FieldValue("Category").Any(g => value(SitefinityWebApp.MyApp.Products+<>c__DisplayClass3_0).categories.Contains(g))).Where(re-p => re-p.FieldValue("Category").Any(g => value(SitefinityWebApp.MyApp.Products+<>c__DisplayClass3_0).categories.Contains(g)))

Please help me understand why this is not working.

Posted by Community Admin on 26-Sep-2016 00:00

Just an update. I have found that using the IEnumerable.Where() works, but the IQueryable.Where() does not. I am guessing this is a result of deferred execution, trying to mix the IEnumerable Guid[] with the IQueryable content collection.

I am not keen on the idea of resolving the IQueryable to an IEnumerable to get this to work, so I would be interested to learn if anybody has solved this in any other ways.

This thread is closed