Working with MVC Views in Umbraco

    Working with MVC Views and Razor syntax in Umbraco

    Properties available in Views

    All Umbraco views inherit from Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoTemplatePage which exposes many properties that are available in razor:

    • @Umbraco (of type Umbraco.Web.UmbracoHelper) -> contains many helpful methods, from rendering macros and fields to retreiving content based on an Id and tons of other helpful methods. See UmbracoHelper Documentation
    • @Html (of type HtmlHelper) -> the same HtmlHelper you know and love from Microsoft but we've added a bunch of handy extension methods like @Html.BeginUmbracoForm
    • @CurrentPage (of type DynamicPublishedContent) -> the dynamic representation of the current page model which allows dynamic access to fields and also dynamic Linq
    • @Model (of type Umbraco.Web.Mvc.RenderModel) -> the model for the view which contains a property called Content which gives you access to the typed current page (of type IPublishedContent).
    • @UmbracoContext (of type Umbraco.Web.UmbracoContext)
    • @ApplicationContext (of type Umbraco.Core.ApplicationContext)
    • @Members (of type Umbraco.Web.Security.MemberShipHelper) See MemberShipHelper Documentation

    Rendering a field with UmbracoHelper

    This is probably the most used method which renders the contents of a field for the current content item.

    @Umbraco.Field("bodyContent")

    There are several optional parameters. Here is the list with their default values:

    • altFieldAlias = ""
    • altText = ""
    • insertBefore = ""
    • insertAfter = ""
    • recursive = false
    • convertLineBreaks = false
    • removeParagraphTags = false
    • casing = RenderFieldCaseType.Unchanged
    • encoding = RenderFieldEncodingType.Unchanged

    The easiest way to use the Field method is to specify the optional parameters you'd like to set. For example, if we want to set the insertBefore and insertAfter parameters we'd do:

    @Umbraco.Field("bodyContent", insertBefore : "<h2>", insertAfter : "</h2>")

    Rendering a field with Model

    The UmbracoHelper method provides many useful parameters to change how the value is rendered. If you however want to render value "as-is" you can use the @Model.Content property of the view. For example:

    @Model.Content.Properties["bodyContent"].Value

    Or alternatively:

    @Model.Content.GetPropertyValue("bodyContent")

    You can also specify the output type that you want from the property. If the property editor or value does not support the conversion then an exception will be thrown. Some examples:

    @Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<double>("amount")
@Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<RawXElement>("xmlContents")

    Rendering a field using @CurrentPage (dynamically)

    The UmbracoHelper method provides many useful parameters to change how the value is rendered. If you however want to render value "as-is" you can use the @CurrentPage property of the view. The difference between @CurrentPage and @Model.Content is that @CurrentPage is the dynamic representation of the model which exposes many dynamic features for querying. For example, to render a field you can use this syntax:

    @CurrentPage.bodyContent

    NOTE: When accessing content dynamically you will not get intellisense if you are using Visual Studio to edit your templates.

    Rendering Macros

    Rendering a macro is done using UmbracoHelper. There are 3 overloads, we'll start with the most basic:

    This renders a macro with the specified alias without any parameters:

    @Umbraco.RenderMacro("myMacroAlias")

    This renders a macro with some parameters using an anonymous object:

    @Umbraco.RenderMacro("myMacroAlias", new { name = "Ned", age = 28 })

    This renders a macro with some parameters using a dictionary

    @Umbraco.RenderMacro("myMacroAlias", new Dictionary<string, object> {{ "name", "Ned"}, { "age", 27}})

    UmbracoHelper Documentation

    Accessing Member data

    @Members is the gateway to everything related to members when templating your site. MemberShipHelper Documentation

    @if(Members.IsLoggedIn()){
   var profile = Members.GetCurrentMemberProfileModel();
   var umbracomember = Members.GetByUsername(profile.UserName);
   
    <h1>@umbracomember.Name</h1>
    <p>@umbracomember.GetPropertyValue<string>("bio")</p>
}

    ModelsBuilder

    ModelsBuilder allows you to use strongly typed models in your views. Properties created on your document types can be accessed with this syntax:

    @Model.BodyText

    When ModelsBuilder resolve your properties, it will also try to use value converters to convert the values of your data into more convenient models. This allows you to access nested objects as strong types instead of having to rely on dynamics and risking having a lot of potential errors when working with these.

    ModelsBuilder documentation