Hi All,

I was wounding if I could ask your expertise and see if there is anybody who can help solve my problem.

Just to try and paint the picture, I have a Page/Node which has a field called 'pageFunctionality'. This field is of type 'MacroContainer' and what it allows is for business users to add macros to the page within Umbraco which I then render in the template (MasterPage).

Each 'Macro' in Umbraco (4.7) has a parameter called 'DisplayLocation' and this parameter when the users adds the macro gives them a dropdown list of where the Macro can be placed (I have a method which holds all the ID's of all my Panels and Placeholders in the application  so I can use the 'FindControl' method to add any .Net User Control wherever I like).

The theory is that the user chooses the DisplayLocation and in the code I can then define where exactly that macro will be placed (anywhere in my masterpage).

What I need to do is get the field 'pageFunctionality', gets all the macros which have been placed in here (just '.split' this into a string array), find the 'DisplayLocation' and then findcontrol to display the macro on the page.

Easy right, well nearly, everything is straight forward apart from I am unable to 'Render' the macros back to my page once I have the string from the field (I don't get an error, the macro just does not display).

Just for testing purposes, for now, all I want to do is get the 'pageFunctionality' field and display this (all from the code-behind of the masterpage, using c#), so I use this:

Item itemContentMacro = new Item();
itemContentMacro.ID = "pageFunctionality";
itemContentMacro.NodeId = iCurrentNodeID.ToString();
itemContentMacro.Field = "pageFunctionality";

// Add the Umbraco Item to the MasterPage
pageGridCol2.Controls.Add(itemContentMacro);

This works fine, the macro is displayed on the page when rendering through the browser.

Now what I want to try and do is extract the 'pageFunctiobality' field into a string (just simply a string for now for testing) and the try and insert this string into a control and then add to the masterpage, so I try something like this:

Item itemContentMacro = new Item();
itemContentMacro.ID = "pageFunctionality";
itemContentMacro.NodeId = iCurrentNodeID.ToString();

// Insert the field content into my string
string sMyMacro = itemContentMacro.PageElements["pageFunctionality"].ToString();

// Add the Macro/String to a Literal Control
Literal literalTest = new Literal();
literalTest.Text = sMyMacro;

pageGridCol2.Controls.Add(literalTest);

I place the MACRO string into a Literal control and then add this to the masterpage. When viewing the page through the browser the macro is NOT displayed.

The value of the 'sMyMacro' variable is:

<?UMBRACO_MACRO  macroalias="GoogleMaps"  sGoogleMapsWidth=""  sGoogleMapsHeight=""  bGoogleMapsUseFavIcon="1"  iGoogleMapsZoom=""  sAudience="Public"  />

All I want to try and do now at this point is wrap this string into a control and have it rendered on the template.

Hopefully the above makes senses, any ideas how to get the Umbraco Macro from a field, place this into a string and then render it back through the masterpage (ofcourse, after I accomplish this I can process the string further and do what I need to do).

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or comments.

Cheers