The challenges of a high traffic site with EPiServer

…with an unconventional approach to data fetching.

This article is a first of a series describing the faceted navigation system for EPiServer that we have internally developed in Cognifide and that’s already proven to be a robust solution for delivering tagged content a heavy traffic site, which will be released shortly as an open source project. The article outlines some pitfalls of EPiServer that we’ve run into and the nature of the project in which the module was used first and which influenced a lot of our design decisions.

This article and the Faceted Navigtation module is developed on EPiServer 4.61 and not the latest version 5 of the CMS so far, so mind that some of my reservations may not be a problem if you’re just starting to work on a brand new project and have the luxury of using new features of it.

Also (which may be a good thing) our sites uses a different approach to navigation the content, we do not really care much for the tree structure, but we treat all EPiServer pages equally when looking for content because of how the site is designed from the creative point of view.

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Popularity: 76% [?]

EPiServer property getter cleaner-upper

Just a daily time saver, for reuse at another time.

Any old time windows developer, will remember the fun of using the ini files with GetPrivateProfileString. As much as ini files sucked there is one nice aspect of that call - you can setup a default value it is to return in case a value is not specified in the file. Similarly in a daily episerver programming you usually want to read a value but if one is not epcified you will usually want to use another value and just move along with the progress, and not really care to have an if there to do the filling in. Not to limit the property to any specific type - the task can be nicely solved with generics to handle pretty much any type of property.

/// <summary> /// Gets a property from a page by its name - if a property does not exist or is not set - returns a default value. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name=”T”>The type of the property</typeparam> /// <param name=”page”>The page to pull the data from</param> /// <param name=”propertyName”>The name of the property</param> /// <param name=”defaultValue”>The value to be returned if the property does not exist or is not set.</param> /// <returns>The value of the property.</returns> public static T GetPropertyDefault<T>(PageData page, string propertyName, T defaultValue) { PropertyData property = page.Property[propertyName]; if (property == null || property.Value == null) { return defaultValue; } else { return (T) property.Value; } }

It’s hard not to appreciate how clean that resolve is (with strong typing being forced with use of generics):

string link = PageUtility.GetPropertyDefault(CurrentPage, “ALink”, “#top”);

Another speedup coming from the TryParse background - when I want to deviate from the normal execution if a property is not defined but still have a clean code and strong typing…

/// <summary> /// Gets a property from a page by its name - if a property does not exist or is not set, /// returns the presence status of the property existence as a boolean value. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name=”T”>The type of the property.</typeparam> /// <param name=”page”>The page to pull the data from</param> /// <param name=”propertyName”>The name of the property</param> /// <param name=”value”>The value to be returned if the property exist and has a value, /// if the proeprty does not exist or is not set the value witll remain unchanged.</param> /// <returns>True if the property was retrieved succesfully, false otherwise.</returns> public static bool TryGetProperty<T>(PageData page, string propertyName, ref T value) { PropertyData property = page.Property[propertyName]; if (property == null || property.Value == null) { return false; } value = (T)property.Value; return true; }

Popularity: 55% [?]

Is EpiServer a hard-shelled clam or what?

As much as I seem to be enjoying my trip with EpiServer there are some little things I don’t seem to appreciate all that much and I’m not quite sure how to work around some of them in an elegant way.

EpiServer has a fairly advanced way of dealing with properties but it also seems to be a bit tough on the developer whenever you try to do something more than just strictly using its API-s. One of the areas I don’t really enjoy is the dealing with the pages that are expired or generally unavailable for the user for various reasons.

In the project that we’ve been implementing recently we needed to store page ids for further reference in numerous places and although this generally works, accessing a page that’s been deleted, expired or not published yet, has proven to be a challenge and I can’t seem to be able to find an elegant solution around it.

For instance, we have a list of bloggers, that are stored in our faceted navigation with links to their pages, our system lists them and the links to their pages, should someone’s page be unpublished yet - we run into problems.

Another good sample of where this is needed is a list of pages (A multi-page property of sorts). There seems to be no implementation of a multi-page property in EpiServer and the only reasonable implementation that I’ve been able to find is available through EpiCode. The following is it deals with the pages going in or out of the system, which leads me to think that the only way of checking whether a page is available for me is to instantiate it with all the consequences of it:

// get the page with error handling for // access denied or deleted page try { PageData page = Global.EPDataFactory.GetPage(pageref); isExternalLink = (page.StaticLinkURL != multipageLinkItem.Url); if (page != null && isExternalLink == false) _selectedPages.Add(page); } catch (PageNotFoundException notFoundEx) { // We should not add the page if it // does not exist } catch (EPiServer.Core.AccessDeniedException accessDeniedEx) { // User is not allowed to see page, skip it } catch (Exception ex) { // The page could not be loaded, for some other // reason. System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write(“Page could not be loaded: “ + pageref.ToString(), “PropertyMultiPage”); }

What I do not like about this part (of an otherwise remarkable piece) of code is that exceptions are not supposed to be the driving force of the program flow. But in this case they seem to have been forced to do it. It’s like I had to open a file to check its size or whether it even exists.

I can see why the system will not let me visit the page if I’m not allowed to do it as a user, but the fact that the API frowns at me whenever I even try to instantiate it just to check its existence or my rights to it has proven to be quite problematic. After all a user is not supposed to see a login screen in the list of pages, but rather when he/she enters a page that he/she no no rights to. Better yet, give me a way to check whether I even can access it.

Is there one already? Has anyone heard? Did anyone see?

Popularity: 63% [?]

The great missing feature of EPiServer

As we’ve been debating with Steve in the EpiCode IRC channel (Come on, join us there! You know you want it!) a few days ago, probably one of the biggest missing features in EPiServer is multi-page property.

Yes there seems to be a fairly robust implementation of a similar functionality on EpiCode however it’s got 2 serious drawbacks:

  1. adding a great number of consecutive pages is a tedious process
  2. it’s not native to EPiServer, meaning - if I use it in my module that I would like to distribute later I need to put the control there. Short of potential licensing issues, this introduces an unnecessary complication level for such distributable modules

Another big issue with the page selecting dialog - apart form being unable to select multiple pages is its inability to root it anywhere outside the original EPiServer repository root. This really limits its quality in terms of re-using of its functionality to be able to use it for selecting of a limited set of pages.

I really wish I could have a clear API for it like I can use the Windows Forms  Open/Save Dialog in desktop applications. I mean seriously - I thought it was impossible that in a product as well thought out as EPiServer something as basic would be missing - there must be something out there to do it, right? WRONG. I looked all around the EPiServer code assemblies and short of re-coding the dialog form grounds up, all I have been able to dig out was a way to re-use the a part of the favorites functionality of the dialog.

You might find a way to reuse the following piece of code. If you put this in your .ASP :

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Popularity: 68% [?]

Posted in ASP.NET, EPiServer, Software Development, Web applications
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Google Maps control (property) for EPiServer

Since my effort towards making this control final has been somewhat limited lately, I’ve decided to simply release the code at its current stage so that others can play with it and perhaps we can have something decent done together. The control operation is described in my previous article therefore I will not be going much into it any longer. the deployment of it is something worth mention though…

Download the control form here. Extract the contents of the zip file to a folder and attach the project to your solution, make sure you have the proper EPiServer libraries referenced form the project or it may complain about the references being broken.

Once you have it compiling, copy the GoogleMapEditor.ascx, GoogleMapViewer.ascx and the contents of the resources folder to a folder named GoogleMap within your project folder. Also copy the contents of the lang folder to the lang folder of your site.

The controls the property instantiate try to be smart about resolving the location of its files, but the property does not know its location thus if you decide to place the scripts in a folder other than just GoogleMaps in the app main folder, you need to add to your web.config the following:

<add key=CogGoogleMapControlLocation value=\GoogleMaps\ />

And in web.config you define the API keys for all the addresses the control will be available from as “CogGoogleMapApiKey_%HOSTNAME%” values.

e.g. set for my machine localhost (for me) & dune(for access from other computers within our network):

<add key=CogGoogleMapApiKey_localhost value=A value generated for ‘localhost’ />
<add key=CogGoogleMapApiKey_dune value=A value generated for ‘dune’ />

The controls determine by themselves which key to use based on the http request so that the Google API does not complain about the key being improper.

Other than this the control should be self registering and all you need to do is to add it to your Page Type in the Admin section of the site and add:

<EPiServer:Property ID=”GoogleMapData” runat=”server” PropertyName=”GoogleMapData” />

to the template you want to use it with.

The control really needs an improved support for translation the stuff currently there is used for learning more that than to actually be useful. Should we decide to go further with it, it definitely will be extended.

The scripts used for the DOPE editing are released under GPL (the scripts were originally released with the MediaWiki GoogleMaps editor under the same license). Those scripts although modified slightly are also released under GPL and are NOT a part of the control - they just happen to be used by it. I am still trying to decide what license use with the rest of the control, so be aware that this is still a subject to be changed, for now just feel free to use the code and should you make any changes to it, please feed them back so that I can improve the control further. The control will most probably end up as a part of Epicode, as soon as I get a response on the epicode forums from Steve on how to add them.

Popularity: 58% [?]

Posted in ASP.NET, Downloadable, EPiServer, Software Development, Web applications
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Effortless Page Comments in EPiServer using ObjectStore.

To finalize my mini series on the object store I’d like to put a simple page comments library. The library takes care of everything that is required for you to post and retrieve a list of comments. It does not (so far) offer any moderation functionality or even facilitates any comments removal. It’s something that I will most probably be added in the process.

I am in the process of figuring out how I can contribute it through the Community EpiCode effort on CodeResort. As soon as I get some answers from Steve, I’ll get it uploaded there. In the mean time let me document how to start using it.

For the time being you can get the code here or the compiled library with the intellisense help form here.

Posting comments

the posting is somewhat manual in terms of not having a pre-made control for it. Which if you look at the code does not have much sense to have.

All you need to do is put two edit boxes on a page and a submit button, and then bind the action of the submit button to a code looking somewhat like:

protected void SubmitComment(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    IPageComment newComment =
        PageCommentFactory.createInstance(Guid.Empty,
        string.Format(“CommentForPage{0}”, CurrentPage.PageLink.ID),
        CurrentPage.PageLink.ID,
        SubjectTextBox.Text, ContentTextBox.Text, DateTime.Now, false, true, false);
    newComment.Save();
}

I honestly don’t feel like making a custom control for creating those would be worthwhile since no one would end up using it anyway.

The listing of comments however…

The comments can be accessed in a number of ways.

Probably the easiest one would be by using the templated control I’ve written in the library, which is a simple descendant of the ASP.NET repeater. The page could would look something like:

...

<%@ Register TagPrefix=”CognifideControls”
    Namespace=”Cognifide.EPiServerControls.PageComments.Controls”
    Assembly=”Cognifide.EPiServerControls.PageComments” %><CognifideControls:PageCommentsList ID=”CommentControl” runat=”server”
    PageLinkIdProperty=”<%# CurrentPage.PageLink.ID %>“>
    <ItemTemplate>
        <b><%# CommentControl.CurrentComment.Title %></b> -
        <%# CommentControl.CurrentComment.SubmitDate.ToString() %><br />
        <%# CommentControl.CurrentComment.Content%><br /><br />
    </ItemTemplate>
</CognifideControls:PageCommentsList>

I’ve chose this way since that’s pretty much the standard way of adding controls that are defined in Episerver and just generally ASP.Net.

But nothing stops you from accessing the comments directly,  and then filling in the data for the repeater yourself like:

<asp:Repeater ID=”CurrentComments” runat=”server”
    OnItemDataBound=”CurrentComments_ItemDataBound”>
    <ItemTemplate>
        <b><asp:Label ID=”CommentSubjectLabel” runat=”server”></asp:Label></b><br />
        <asp:Label ID=”CommentContentLabel” runat=”server”></asp:Label><br /><br />
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

And then in the code-behind

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    List<IPageComment> comments =
        PageCommentFactory.GetCommentsForPage(CurrentPage.PageLink.ID,
        DateTime.MinValue, DateTime.MaxValue, true);
    CurrentComments.DataSource = comments;
    CurrentComments.DataBind();
}

protected void CurrentComments_ItemDataBound(object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
    IPageComment comment = (e.Item.DataItem as IPageComment);
    Label commentSubjectLabel = (Label)e.Item.FindControl(“CommentSubjectLabel”);
    if (comment != null)
    {
        commentSubjectLabel.Text = comment.Title;
    }

    Label commentContentLabel = (Label)e.Item.FindControl(“CommentContentLabel”);
    if (comment != null)
    {
        commentContentLabel.Text = comment.Content;
    }
}

That’s pretty much what my implementation does anyway.

I hope to be able to put it up on CodeResort soon so that we can see what else could be done. Additionally my library allows for replacing the persistence provider, which we will probably have implemented using nHibernate to test its speed versus the ObjectStore. Should you be interested in providing some help with this, or adding come moderation code to the admin side of the site on top of the interface, it would definitely be greatly appreciated.

I have started implementing the Property based on the code so that it can be easily displayed on the editor’s page, but for now, I’ll have to delay it since we’ve got some other stuff to do related to the project I’m currently working on.

Popularity: 72% [?]

Posted in ASP.NET, C#, Downloadable, EPiServer, Software Development, Web applications
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